“The stakes are so huge,” McAuliffe said on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe.” “If people don’t understand, they come out in presidential years, but they have to come out in this off year because literally their lives depend on it.”
McAuliffe said Obama was campaigning for him on Saturday, but his campaign later clarified in a statement that the event will be held next Saturday on October 23.
“If people don’t wake up,” a Democratic operative in Virginia told CNN recently, “we are in trouble.”
Obama is one of the biggest names in Democratic politics and has long been able to garner considerable media attention and engage the party’s base. Obama won Virginia twice, too, by 6 percentage points in 2008 and nearly 4 percentage points in 2012.
Obama will be just one of many top Democrats to campaign for McAuliffe. Stacey Abrams, a top Georgia Democrat and voting rights activist, will campaign for the Democratic ticket this weekend, while first lady Jill Biden will campaign with McAuliffe on Friday. The President campaigned with McAuliffe in Northern Virginia over the summer.