Former President Barack Obama traveled to Milwaukee on Saturday afternoon, October 29, to campaign for another “Democrat with a funny name”: Mandela Barnes, the Wisconsin Democratic candidate for US Senate.  It was an opportunity for Obama to hit back at former President Donald Trump, who plagued him throughout his presidency with racist dog whistles that falsely cast doubt on American citizenship.  “Mandela, get ready to dig up that birth certificate,” Obama teased to huge applause.

“I know there are some people, probably — maybe not in this auditorium, but elsewhere in Wisconsin — who think … just because Mandela is called Mandela, just because he’s a Democrat with a funny name, he must not be like you, you must not share your values,” Obama said from the stage of a high school in Milwaukee.  He referred to GOP attack ads “implying that Mandela is dangerous and different,” the former president added.

“I mean, we’ve seen that,” Obama said.  “Sounds familiar enough, doesn’t it?”

Obama jokingly referred to Trump’s “birthology” conspiracy as “the good old days,” a time when Trump’s only interactions with the White House were his demands that Obama produce his long paper birth certificate.  “Remember that was the craziest thing he ever said?”  Obama said, never mentioning Trump by name.  “Now, it doesn’t even make the crazy 10 list.”

Obama traveled to Wisconsin ahead of a high-stakes midterm election in a state President Joe Biden won by just 20,000 votes two years ago.  Barnes faces incumbent Sen. Ron Johnson (R-Wisc.), whom Obama indicted for his alleged role in trying to provide fake electors to then-Vice President Mike Pence in an effort to sway the results of Wisconsin’s 2020 presidential election. . “If that doesn’t provoke uniform outrage, what will?”  Obama said.  “What would it take?”

Barnes’ parallel with Obama goes beyond the “funny name.”  Barnes carved his own political path in the Obama mold, beginning his career as a community organizer in Milwaukee for the same national network that Obama served on Chicago’s South Side.  Those relative beginnings and Barnes’ rapid rise through the political ranks of Wisconsin — a state legislator at 26, lieutenant governor at 32 — have drawn comparisons to the former president’s own meteoric rise to America’s highest office.

Wisconsin Democrats who took the stage Saturday were eager to remind the crowd of those comparisons: A local Democratic organizer noted that the state had the opportunity to “elect our first black senator,” just as it had the nation’s first black president 14 years ago.  Barnes said he was coming home from a summer job and caught then-Senator Obama’s keynote address during the Democratic National Convention in 2004. “It was literally a speech that changed my life,” he said.

Obama also campaigned on behalf of Democratic Gov. Tony Evers, who faces a tough re-election battle against GOP candidate Tim Michels, who has been endorsed by the state’s longest-serving former governor, Tommy Thompson.  Evers has “a little bit more of a Clark Kent vibe than Superman,” Obama teased the soon-to-be 71-year-old (his birthday is in November) of the Wheaties-like Evers.  “But,” he added, “he may be the best hope of democracy in Wisconsin.  That’s one more reason he deserves your vote.”

Obama also unleashed criticism of “a breakdown of basic civility” in politics.  “This habit of saying the worst about people,” Obama thought, “creates a dangerous climate.”  He condemned the “exaggerated, crazy rhetoric” and the “elected [who] do no more to reject it.’  Obama also called out right-wing efforts to undermine fair elections through voter intimidation and vigilante tactics.  “If they tell supporters to stand outside polling places with guns and tactical gear,” Obama said, “that’s the kind of thing that ends up hurting people.”  Obama had opened his remarks with a prayer for Paul Pelosi, the husband of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Wisc.) who was critically injured at the couple’s San Francisco home on Friday after a hammer-wielding attacker attacked him , was reportedly looking for Gay.  His remarks echoed similar points he had made during an appearance in Detroit earlier Saturday.

The former president’s appearance marked the third of Obama’s five-state midterms.  His itinerary focuses on urban centers with large concentrations of black voters, in states where their turnout could be decisive in upheavals of governors and the US Senate.  Of all its stops, Milwaukee looms especially large as a cautionary tale: Hillary Clinton infamously skips campaigning in Wisconsin during the 2016 general election, a tactical decision blamed for eroding black voters who supported Obama’s healthy margins of victory in 2008 and 201. President Joe Biden defeated Trump, turnout in Milwaukee was no better than it was in 2016 — and, in fact, was slightly worse in majority-Black precincts.

Obama’s return to Milwaukee, then, was an effort to recover those “Obama landslides,” as Wisconsin Democratic Party Chairman Ben Wickler told the crowd before Obama’s remarks.  The crowd seemed eager to catch it again, breaking out into spontaneous chants of “lit up, ready to go!”, a feature of Obama rallies when the former president first ran for office in 2008.

“The reason I’m here is simple,” Obama said early in his remarks.  “I’m here to ask you to vote.”

But some Wisconsin Democrats were worried about potential voters who weren’t in the crowd Saturday afternoon.  North Division High School, in Milwaukee’s 53206 ZIP code, is one of the city’s poorest and most incarcerated — and home to the black voters Democrats hope will turn out in November.  But the crowd of thousands that packed the North Division gym was far whiter than the surrounding neighborhood, a result that gave state legislator David Bowen pause.  “My fear is that the people who need to hear his message won’t,” Bowen, who attended Saturday’s rally, tells Rolling Stone.

Jokes from the crowd confirmed Bowen’s fears.  Kim and Jermain Jordan, sisters who live in the same neighborhood as the school where Obama spoke, said they couldn’t get their five children, all in their 20s and 30s, to come to Obama’s rally or vote for her. election day — even though both happen at that high school.  “They say, ‘What’s the point?’  says Kim Jordan in Rolling Stone.  Both, however, vowed to insist their children join them at the polls on Tuesday, November 8.