WASHINGTON _ Nonpresidential elections for members of the House and Senate almost always become a referendum on how the country is doing under a president midway through a four-year term.
But with Barack Obama's tradition-breaking decision to campaign for fellow Democrats this fall, two presidencies are in voters' minds. President Donald Trump had already thrust himself onto center stage with his dominating social media presence and bold policy initiatives. A "resistance" movement emerged literally the day after his inauguration with a massive anti-Trump rally on the National Mall and others around the country.
It's uncharted territory, with two strong presidential figures roaming the political landscape this fall. Will Obama's re-emergence help or hurt Democrats in Missouri, a state he nearly won in 2008 but lost to Mitt Romney by 9 points in 2012? Will he help or hurt Democratic challengers in local congressional races, particularly two Metro East seats in Illinois?
Don't expect the former president to spend much time, if any, in Missouri, although he has already hosted a fundraiser for Sen. Claire McCaskill, D-Mo., in Beverly Hills, Calif. Republicans, locally and nationally, say his presence could help energize their voters in states that Obama didn't win, including Missouri.
"President Obama fired up Republicans like nobody," said Rep. Steve Stivers, R-Ohio, the head of the National Republican Congressional Committee. "And I'm happy if he wants to do it again."
Rep. William Lacy Clay, D-St. Louis, disagreed that Obama couldn't help in Missouri. He said the former president could help in the state by using targeted telephone calls and urban radio ads.
"He would help Claire (McCaskill), if he stuck to the Kansas City-St. Louis metro areas," Clay said.
Obama's spokeswoman, Katie Hill, would not comment on the former president's election travel plans. But an aide close to Obama pointed to current Sen. Doug Jones, D-Ala., as a model for Missouri.
That aide said that "we are aware of the galvanizing influence" Obama has in motivating Republicans to vote against him in some states. In Alabama's special Senate election last year, Obama recorded pro-Jones "robocalls" that were made to Democratic voters in parts of that state just before the election. They were able to do that under the radar of pre-election media coverage. "It helped moved the needle for the Jones campaign," this Obama aide said.
Rarely, if ever, have voters seen two presidents this actively campaigning in a nonpresidential year. As a result, the 2018 off-year elections are not only nationalized, they are a de facto choice between two presidencies; Trump's and Obama's.
Despite an economy that grew 4.2 percent from April through June, rising middle-class income and unemployment nearing historic lows, Trump's Republican Party faces a tough fight to hold onto the House and Senate in November, polls suggest. A new CNN poll has Trump's approval rating at 37 percent, his disapproval at 57. An early September Quinnipiac University poll had Democrats leading Republicans by 14 points when likely voters asked who they preferred in congressional races.
A Gallup study showed that the party with a president whose approval is below 50 loses an average of 37 House seats. If Republicans lose a net 23, they lose control of the House.
Other, controversial parts of Trump's agenda _ from tough immigration policies to tariffs and trade policies that have disrupted some markets to foreign policy _ have diffused benefits from a booming economy that might have accrued to Trump and his party at the ballot box this fall. Trump, himself, has contributed by tweeting far more on independent counsel Robert Mueller's ongoing investigation than the bullish economic news.
But Obama's re-entry into the process potentially complicates the equation for Democrats in key Senate races like the one in Missouri, where Democrats face re-election in states Trump easily won in 2016. And some swing House districts where Obama was not that popular could also be affected.
They include the 12th and 13th Illinois districts, where Republican Reps. Mike Bost and Rodney Davis, respectively, face Democratic challengers. Betsy Dirksen Londrigan is running against Davis; St. Clair County Attorney Brendan Kelly is running against Bost.
Obama won both Illinois districts handily in 2008, but he narrowly won Bost's district in 2012 and narrowly lost Davis' district that year despite winning Illinois in a landslide Trump won Bost's district by 15 points, Davis' district by 5 in 2016.
As testament to the split view on Obama in his district, Davis _ who is a leader in a bipartisan House group trying to dissolve some of the discord in that body _ took his college-age daughter to listen to an Obama speech at the University of Illinois-Urbana Champaign this month.
"While I could focus on the areas in his speech where I disagreed or make my own criticisms of the other side, I believe it's better for our country and for students to hear about where Democrats and Republicans have worked together," Davis said afterward. "Opportunities for Americans to hear about the bipartisanship that exists in Washington are rare, but worthy of attention."
But Obama said some things in that speech _ including referring to "wild conspiracy theories" that he said erupted around the deaths of four Americans in a 2012 terrorist attack on the U.S. consulate in Benghazi, Libya _ that riled Republicans and stirred social media.
Likewise, Obama's explanations of why some Americans supported Trump _ that they don't understand or accept the inevitable "change" undergoing America _ rekindled Obama's infamous 2008 campaign description of "bitter" people who "cling to guns or religion or antipathy to people who aren't like them, or anti-immigrant sentiment or anti-trade sentiment as a way to explain their frustrations."
From there, it is a short rhetorical leap to Hillary Clinton's 2016 "deplorables" description of Trump followers, a label that still roils some in the nation's midsection as a symbol of politicians who talk down to them.
In 2012, his last election, Obama lost West Virginia by 27 percentage points, North Dakota by roughly 20, Montana by just under, Indiana by more than 10, and Missouri by just over 9.
All five have Democratic senators facing re-election this year, and their fates are pivotal in which party controls the Senate in 2019.
Republican candidates in those states have been quick to capitalize on Obama's re-emergence.
"It would be fitting if Barack Obama came to campaign for Senator McCaskill given her rubber-stamp support for his liberal agenda," McCaskill's opponent, Republican Attorney General Josh Hawley, said.
McCaskill, asked recently about Obama's re-emergence, said she'd welcome the former president, who she endorsed over Hillary Clinton in 2008, to Missouri.
"If President Obama wanted to come here that would be fine," she said. But, McCaskill added, "he's got a lot of people pulling on him in other places and I don't know whether he will come or not."
Obama's critics have attacked him for breaking protocol, for not giving his immediate successor wide sway to impose his policies, as previous presidents have done.
Clay, defending Obama, said these are not normal times.
"Obama's legacy is directly under attack by this administration," Clay said. "They are trying to undo all of the gains that we made under the previous eight years under Obama."
But Republicans see in Obama a chance to make a case that their rollback of Obama regulations and tax cuts have led to robust economic gains under Trump.
"In the last quarter, our economy is growing at 4.2 percent. Four million new jobs, unemployment at a 50-year low," Vice President Mike Pence Told Fox News. "And to have President Obama come out and tout his policies that resulted in less than 2 percent growth ... was very disappointing."
