If Clinton is wary of being tied too closely to Obama, there was little sign of that in her remarks, as she praised his family, leadership, judgment, and track record. “Actually, I don’t think he gets the credit he deserves for saving our economy,” she said, ticking off a litany of benchmarks: “I could go on and on but you get the idea.” She framed her role not as a third Obama term, but as using his legacy as a base. “Our next president has a different job to do: building on the progress that President Obama has made,” Clinton said.

It would have been easy for her to get carried away with the love for Obama in the crowd. The president won North Carolina narrowly in 2008, buoyed by strong support from African Americans and city dwellers in urban centers like Charlotte. Pauline Semuel, a distinguished black woman, came to the rally wearing a dress she’d had made out of five Obama t-shirts, each in different colors. She’d missed a chance to see Obama speak at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte, where she was working at the time, and was determined not to miss him again.

“I’m very excited about the history that’s being made here,” she told me. “I’m excited the President Obama and Hillary Clinton are coming together, a black man and a white woman. They can’t talk about prejudice. Let’s talk about love.”

Leonard Williams, another Charlotte resident, was more direct about the historical resonance of the two politicians. “I’m here to join the celebration,” he said. “It’s like a red moon.”

If the shots at Trump were clear and pointed, Clinton and especially Obama had a pointed, if slightly more subtle, message for the other candidate in the race, Senator Bernie Sanders, and to his supporters: Fall into line. Recalling her rivalry with Obama in 2008, Clinton said, “When it was over, I was proud to endorse him and campaign for him,” emphasizing the syllables.

Obama made the case for party unity in the face of a Trump candidacy at greater length. “At the end of our contest, I saw the grace and the energy with which she threw herself into my campaign,” he said. “Not because she wasn’t disappointed by the outcome of the primary, but because she knew there was something at stake that was bigger than either of us, and that was the direction of the country. We may have gone toe to toe from coast to coast, but we stood shoulder to shoulder for the ideals we shared.”

Neither Obama nor Clinton mentioned FBI Director James Comey’s press conference earlier Tuesday, in which he announced that he was recommending that Clinton not be charged with any crime for her use of a private email server, yet also starkly criticized her judgment in using the system. But Clinton, like Obama, seemed in high spirits.

The event brought Clinton back to North Carolina for the second time in two weeks. On June 22, she held a rally at the state fairgrounds in Raleigh. Two recent polls, from CBS News and the conservative, North Carolina-based Civitas Institute, show Clinton with a small lead over Trump. A third, from Democratic-affiliated firm Public Policy Polling, showed Trump up narrowly.