‘This isn’t a reality show’

Former US president Barack Obama excoriated Donald Trump and warned against complacency despite favorable opinion polls during his first public rally in support of Democratic challenger Joe Biden on Wednesday ahead of the November 3 election. 

Campaigning for Democratic White House nominee Joe Biden in Pennsylvania, Obama likened Trump to a "crazy uncle" and said he emboldened racists.

In North Carolina, the Republican president mocked Obama for being wrong about the 2016 election outcome.

More than 42 million Americans have already voted, according to the US Elections Project of the University of Florida, nearly 30 percent of the total turnout in 2016.

Biden and Trump are scheduled to meet in their second and final debate later in the night in Nashville, Tennessee, giving the Republican an opportunity to change the trajectory of a race that Biden is leading in national opinion polls.

But the margin is slimmer in the handful of US states that could go either way and ultimately decide the outcome on 3 November.

At the drive-in rally in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, one of a handful of battleground states expected to decide the election, Obama lashed out at Trump's behavior and declared him "incapable of taking the job seriously."

But he also issued a stark reminder of 2016, when opinion polls showed Hillary Clinton as the clear favorite -- only for her and her supporters to be shocked by a Trump victory on election day.

"We can't be complacent. I don't care about the polls," the former two-term president told the rally outside a baseball stadium.

"There were a whole bunch of polls last time. Didn't work out. Because a whole bunch of folks stayed at home. And got lazy and complacent. Not this time. Not in this election."

He told supporters that too much was at stake to have four more years of Trump leading the nation, seeking to contrast his successor -- a Republican real estate mogul and ex-reality TV star -- with his former vice president.

"This is not a reality show. This is reality," Obama said. "And the rest of us have had to live with the consequences of him proving himself incapable of taking the job seriously."

Obama, who governed for two terms and remains one of the most popular figures in the Democratic Party, blasted Trump for his handling of the coronavirus pandemic, noting that the president himself had fallen victim to the virus.

"Donald Trump isn't suddenly going to protect all of us," he said. "He can't even take the basic steps to protect himself."

"Our democracy's not going to work if the people who are supposed to be our leaders lie every day and just make things up," he said.

After attacking Trump over his handling of the coronavirus and the economy, Obama turned to the president's tweets.

He said if Biden won, "we're not going to have a president who goes out of his way to insult anybody who doesn't support him, or threaten them with jail. That's not normal presidential behaviour".

Obama said voters would not tolerate such conduct from a family member, "except for maybe a crazy uncle somewhere".

"Why are folks making excuses for that?" he said. "… There are consequences to these actions.

"They embolden other people to be cruel. And divisive. And racist. And it frays the fabric of our society."

He added: "That behaviour matters. Character matters."

TRUMP MOCKS OBAMA

While Obama was in Pennsylvania, Trump visited North Carolina, another of the battleground states, where he riled up the crowd with popular campaign themes, such as his law-and-order platform.

"If Biden wins, the flag-burning demonstrators in the street will be running your federal government," Trump told spectators gathered at a municipal airport in the city of Gastonia.

The president could not resist taking a pop at Obama.

"There was nobody that campaigned harder for crooked Hillary Clinton than Obama, right?" Trump told supporters, who booed at the mention of his old adversaries' names. "He was all over the place."

The president added: "I think the only one more unhappy than crooked Hillary that night was Barack Hussein Obama."

BAD OPINION POLLS FOR TRUMP

Biden is ahead of Trump by 2.3 percentage points in North Carolina, according to a polling average by RealClearPolitics.

A Quinnipiac University poll of likely voters released on Wednesday meanwhile gave Biden a 51-43 lead in Pennsylvania, which Trump won by a narrow margin in 2016.

And another Quinnipiac poll spelled potential trouble for his reelection hopes.

The poll had the Democratic and Republican presidential candidates in a 47-47 dead heat in Texas, a state which Trump won by nine points four years ago and which hasn't voted for a Democrat since Jimmy Carter in 1976. 

Obama will next hit the campaign trail in the potentially pivotal election state of Florida, travelling to Miami on Saturday and Orlando next week.

The Biden campaign is hoping the star power of America's first Black president will help boost turnout among young voters and African Americans, who are key to Democratic hopes of recapturing the White House.

African Americans voted in record numbers for Obama in 2008 and 2012 but their participation dropped off in 2016, a contributing factor to Trump's victory over Clinton.