RICHMOND, Va. -- Barack Obama is back -- at least for a moment.

The 44th president made his first public campaign appearances Thursday since leaving office, attempting to rally the spirits of sullen Democrats and offer a lift to a pair of gubernatorial candidates in the final weeks of their campaigns.

But Obama's mere single-day return to the public fold also conjured up bittersweet feelings around the gravity of his party's loss in last year's presidential election and the void his departure has left among Democrats searching for a new leader.

While Obama purposely did not mention President Donald Trump by name in either of his stops in Virginia or New Jersey, he made sure to channel the foreboding mood of his party and ratchet up the urgency around the low-profile off-year races on the ballot this November. He tailored his remarks to the contests at hand and avoided directly confronting his successor, but it was clear in both content and tone that his overarching message was a veiled response to the Oval Office's current occupant.

"Folks don't feel good right now about what they see. They don't feel as if our public life reflects our best. Instead of our politics reflecting our values, we've got politics infecting our communities," Obama said during an evening rally for Virginia's Democratic gubernatorial nominee Ralph Northam, the current lieutenant governor.

But Obama balanced that dour sentiment with his signature battle cry for hope and optimism, even dusting off his old campaign slogan, "Yes we can!"

"There are people all across this country that want to do things better," he said, raising his voice over the deafening applause inside the Richmond Convention Center.

Given Trump's incessant criticism of Obama and his drive to undo much of Obama's legislative legacy, it was an open question whether the former president would use the day to respond to the current one.

But an aide to Obama says the former president wanted only to "speak to our better values and ideals" by making a policy-driven case for the candidacies of Northam and Phil Murphy, the Democratic candidate for governor in New Jersey.

"It's in no one's interest – including the former president's, the Democratic Party's, or the country's – for President Obama to become the face of any resistance or the party," says the Obama aide. "He is acutely aware that when he consumes political oxygen, it can stifle the attention that should be on current and emerging leaders in the party."

In a 30-minute address in Richmond, wearing a royal blue shirt without a tie under a navy jacket, a noticeably relaxed Obama completed the obligatory task of heaping praise on Northam, who holds a single-digit advantage over Republican Ed Gillespie in most public polls, as well as the others at the top of the Democratic ticket in Virginia.

But he repeatedly acknowledged the sinking feeling Trump's election caused his supporters and warned that they couldn't be complacent at any turn in fighting it.

"Do you want a politics of division and distraction or do you believe in a better kind of politics, one where we work together and listen to each other and move this country forward?" he asked.

He razzed Democrats for taking a feckless approach to non-presidential elections, but implored that now, "the stakes don't allow you to sleep."

"I don't want to hear folks complaining and not doing something about it," he said.

Then he needled the young people in the audience. "I think that it's great that you hashtag and meme," he chided to laughs. "But I need you to vote!"

The Democratic crowd reveled in Obama's presence, with many audience members donning 2008 campaign T-shirts, stickers and buttons. In Newark, New Jersey, chants of "four more years" filled the room as he took the podium.

"I've missed him since January 20th!" gushed Becky Bowers-Lanier, an attendee at the Richmond event. "The crowd was fabulous. The people who were waiting in line -- young, old, black, white, brown. I'm sorry, I'm stereotyping, but I don't think you see that at a Republican event. Every time I see Trump, the folks behind him are white."

Standing towards the back of the civic center, Bowers-Lanier met Wendy Alsop-Corbin, an African-American Democrat from Hanover, Virginia, and they swapped stories of previous Obama events they had been to.

Neither minded that Obama decided against taking on Trump. In fact, they said they're glad he didn't.

"He is a classy man. He does not have to. Like Michelle [Obama] said, 'When they go low, we go high,'" Bowers-Lanier said.

Added Alsop-Cobrin, "He won't stoop to that level. That would be beneath him. That would tarnish him completely. He doesn't need to. He's got other surrogates telling Trump, 'You're a f---ing liar.'"

Yet Obama still found roundabout ways to counter Trump's most caustic charges. For instance, he noted he visited Walter Reed -- the U.S. Army's flagship medical center -- consistently throughout his eight years in office, only days after Trump accused him of not calling Gold Star parents who had lost children in war zones.

Standing in the commonwealth still wounded by August's hate-fueled violence in Charlottesville, he even gently waded into the debate over Confederate statues by saying the conversation over the nation's checkered heritage should be conducted with an aim towards healing.

"You notice I haven't been commenting on politics lately," he said. "But here's one thing I know. If you have to win a campaign by dividing people, you're not going to be able to govern them. You won't be able to unite them later, if that's how you start."

At the afternoon stop in New Jersey, where polls have shown Murphy holding a formidable lead for 14 to 18 points over Republican Lt. Gov. Kim Guadagno, Obama cautioned against complacency, making a glancing reference to Hillary Clinton's defeat almost a year ago.

"You can't take this election for granted. You can't take any election for granted," he said. "I don't know if ya'll noticed that. You've gotta run through the tape."

As Obama has now visited both states with governor's races this year, it's noticeable that Trump hasn't yet appeared in either.

Virginia Gov. Terry McAuliffe said Gillespie is treating Trump "as a communicable disease," as his campaign deliberates whether the president's divisive imprint is worth the risk in a state Trump lost.

Northam charged that Gillespie is "cut from the same cloth" as Trump and said of Republicans, "All they're trying to do is take Barack Obama's name off everything he did."

For Obama though, his return to politics was an adept balancing act of keeping the focus on the candidates at hand, while oh-so-gently and subtly countering a presidency that is completely antithetical to his own. He accomplished that, without (yet) provoking a presidential tweet.

For many Democrats, Obama's reemergence was as much a therapy session as a call to arms.