On visit home, Obama looks backward and forward

Barack Obama
Gov. Pat Quinn, D-Ill., center, and Sen. Dick Durbin, D-Ill., second from right, watch as President Barack Obama delivers doughnuts and pastries to Democratic campaign volunteers on Oct. 20, in Chicago. (AP Photo/Evan Vucci)

CHICAGO (AP) — A lesson from President Barack Obama’s brief trip home, straight out of Shakespeare: What’s past is prologue.
While his trip to Chicago offered a sweet taste of nostalgia, it also offered reminders that his efforts in the first six years of his presidency have set the stage for immense challenges in his final two years.
Everywhere he went, Obama got glimpses of a simpler time when his life was for the most part, normal: the unpaid bills on his desk, the volunteers who pitched in on his first Senate campaign, the day he marched in seven Fourth of July parades.
But at each stop, Obama also confronted the likelihood that the resistance he’s faced so far will only grow steeper after the midterm elections wrap up.
Obama’s overnight trip was intended to showcase the president on the campaign trail in one of the few states where he’s still popular enough to help his party: his home state of Illinois. But even Obama had to acknowledge that in the toughest races that Democrats are fighting this year, his party’s candidates want nothing less than to be seen in public with the president.
“The bottom line is, though, these are all folks who vote with me. They have supported my agenda in Congress,” Obama said in an interview Monday for the Rev. Al Sharpton’s radio show.
Republicans pounced.
After all, Democrats have spent the entire year trying to distance themselves from Obama, while Republicans argued a vote for a Democrat this year is a vote for Obama’s record and policies. Now Obama was making the GOP’s point for them.
Obama insisted his feelings weren’t hurt. He said he understood that some Democrats must distance themselves from his record.
“Do what you need to do to win,” he said. “I will be responsible for making sure that our voters turn out.”
And so he did — in a college gymnasium where he rallied for Illinois Gov. Pat Quinn, at a campaign office where volunteers put their phone-a-thon on hold to gobble up doughnuts delivered by the president, and at his local polling place, where Obama voted early and urged voters across the country to do the same.
But for a few brief hours, Obama retreated from the noise of the city, the urgency of the campaign and pressures awaiting him back in Washington to be alone at his home on Chicago’s South Side. Perhaps it was during this stretch on a chilly Monday afternoon that Obama took to looking around the house that he, his wife and two daughters left behind when they headed east six years ago.
Reminiscing at a fundraiser Monday night just before flying back to Washington, Obama said his home now feels like a time capsule, with little reminders of his life before the White House still in the same position he left them. As Obama explained to a crowd of well-heeled Democratic donors, he and his family left Chicago so quickly after his 2008 election that they left newspapers, junk mail and unpaid bills on the desk.
“We always thought we’d be back every month and we’d kind of get everything in order and filed, and it hasn’t happened,” Obama said. “But it’s useful, actually, to take a look at some of these old articles to remind ourselves of where we were when we took office and to think about the progress we’ve made.”
Barack Obama
President Barack Obama addresses the crowd during an early voting and campaign rally for Illinois Gov. Pat Quinn at Chicago State University Sunday, Oct. 19, 2014, in Chicago. Early voting in Illinois starts Monday for the Nov. 4, election. (AP Photo/Charles Rex Arbogast)

A look at how Obama spent his day in Chicago:
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HOME SWEET HOME
There’s nothing like waking up in your own bed. And since he’s traveling stag, Obama had the house to himself – save for a few dozen Secret Service agents, of course, who lock down the streets around the Obamas’ South Side home whenever the president comes to town.
How Obama spent his Monday morning is anyone’s guess. While the president often heads out for a morning workout at a nearby gym when he’s in Chicago, this time he didn’t emerge until after 11 a.m.
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VOTE EARLY – AND OFTEN
Obama wants Democrats across the country to vote early this year, hoping to boost turnout in a midterm year when Democrats historically tend not to vote. So Obama put his money where his mouth is, strolling in to a polling place near his house on the first day of early voting in Illinois.
“Barack Obama?” asked the poll worker at the Dr. Martin Luther King Community Service Center. Good guess.
“That’s me!” the president replied.
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BROCCOLI DOUGHNUTS?
Volunteers making phone calls for Quinn got a pep talk from the president – and a less-than-healthy snack.
Making a surprise appearance at one of Quinn’s campaign field offices, Obama brought three cartons of doughnuts, the oil from the pastries seeping through the white boxes.
But would the first lady approve?
“Michelle sent these,” Obama quipped, playing off his wife’s childhood nutrition campaign. “We got broccoli, carrots.”
Obama seemed in his element as he worked the room and chatted with volunteers – some of whom had worked on his own 2008 campaign.
“Nothing like campaign fever going on,” Obama said.
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OUT OF SIGHT, BUT NOT OUT OF MIND
Just after noon, Obama was back home for a quiet afternoon out of the spotlight. Aides said he was being briefed by phone on the government’s Ebola response by his homeland security adviser, Lisa Monaco. Obama was also calling in to African American radio stations – another move aimed at getting out the vote.
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SHOW ME THE MONEY
Before heading back to the White House Monday night, Obama stopped at a supporter’s home to raise money for the Democratic National Committee. The price to attend? $10,000 a pop.
At a lavish home in Chicago’s Lincoln Park neighborhood, Obama said it was good to be home — if only to clear out the junk mail and old newspapers he left on his desk when he moved into the White House in early 2009.
“It’s a little like being in a time capsule,” he said.
 
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Reach Josh Lederman on Twitter at https://twitter.com/joshledermanAP

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