AYESHA RASCOE, HOST:
Democrats don't control the Senate, House or White House, which raises the stakes for the party in this week's state and local elections. Voters in Virginia and New Jersey go to the polls to choose new governors and decide which party controls the statehouse, which are both currently majority Democrat, and former President Barack Obama wants to keep it that way. He's using his continued popularity this weekend to rally support for Democrats in both those states, as NPR's Sarah McCammon reports from Virginia.
SARAH MCCAMMON, BYLINE: As former President Obama took the stage in Norfolk, he used the moment to call out several of President Trump's recent actions. He said Trump is replacing career prosecutors with loyalists and targeting his enemies with investigations and prosecutions.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)
BARACK OBAMA: We got a president who thinks it's OK to use the Justice Department to go after his political opponents.
(BOOING)
OBAMA: Hey. Wait, wait, don't boo.
UNIDENTIFIED CROWD: Vote.
OBAMA: Vote. They don't hear boos. They hear votes.
(CHEERING)
MCCAMMON: Obama campaigned on the campus of Old Dominion University, alongside former Congresswoman Abigail Spanberger, the Democratic nominee for Virginia governor. At a time when Republicans and their allies control all three branches of the federal government, Obama's message to Democrats was that their votes can still make a difference in the off-year elections taking place this week.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)
OBAMA: We all have more power than we think. We just have to use it.
MCCAMMON: Even as many of Trump's actions have been unpopular with voters, the Democratic Party has struggled in recent months with historically low approval ratings. An NPR/PBS News/Marist poll in September found that congressional Democrats were less popular than their Republican counterparts, and all of them were less popular than Trump. Obama acknowledged that some voters, worried about the state of the economy and the country, had decided to give Trump a chance at another term.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)
OBAMA: Now, nine months later, you got to ask yourself, has any of that gotten better?
UNIDENTIFIED CROWD: No.
RASCOE: La'Shon Jordan (ph), who came to the rally from nearby Virginia Beach, said she'd voted for Trump the first time in her 55 years that she'd ever voted for a Republican. She says she felt the country was failing, and she hoped Trump would turn it around.
LA'SHON JORDAN: He talked things that he thought we wanted to hear. You know, we needed to hear those things, but we needed to hear them from a Democratic candidate. And a lot of us were bamboozled - you know? - is a good word.
MCCAMMON: Jordan works as a family engagement specialist at a public school in Norfolk. She says the federal government shutdown has been hard on some of the low-income families she serves. Jordan blames Trump and the Republicans for the impact of the shutdown, including uncertainty around food stamp benefits.
JORDAN: And now he's taking those things away or his party is - I don't know, I feel like he's taking those things away. And our kids and our families are suffering from that.
MCCAMMON: Jordan says she hopes voters will elect Democratic candidates like Abigail Spanberger in Virginia to push back on some of Trump's policies. As the shutdown continues, Democrats are trying to press Republicans to extend COVID-era tax subsidies for health care under the Affordable Care Act.
Tammy Nelms (ph) from Chesapeake, Virginia, is a registered nurse, and she says Democrats face a tough choice right now.
TAMMY NELMS: If they give in to say, OK, we're going to open the government. And then the price of health care is going to rise and hurt millions of people. So, you know, it seems like it's either way. It's just not a good choice.
MCCAMMON: Her husband, Wade Nelms, says he supports Democrats, but he thinks the party overall is struggling to find its way forward.
WADE NELMS: Even though if you don't like the Republican leader, they've got a direction. They've got a very clear direction. It may not be the direction that we like. Ours just seems to be kind of fractioned. Nationally, I just don't see a big leader step up and say, here's what we're going to do. Here's how we're going to combat all the bad things that are happening right now, and someone that we can follow and join.
MCCAMMON: The Democratic Party will face one of its first major tests of Trump's second term when voters in Virginia and a handful of other places wrap up voting on Tuesday.
Sarah McCammon, NPR News, Norfolk, Virginia. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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