Read: Barack Obama reflects on leaving the presidency.

There isn’t another Democratic leader who comes close—virtually no candidate asked for Hillary Clinton to appear on the trail, despite the nonstop interviews she’s been doing to stay part of the conversation.

So for Obama, it’s about making sure Democrats win, but it’s also a final attempt to protect a legacy Donald Trump has relentlessly attacked—and to convince the country that the future lies in his hopeful multiculturalism rather than in the current president’s dark nativism.

Obama dismissed what’s been coming out of Trump. He rebuked Trump for “taking our brave troops away from their families for a political stunt at the border.” And he said that “a president doesn’t get to decide on his own who’s an American and who’s not. That’s not how the Constitution works.”

The irony is that Democrats are more eager to have Obama out on the trail than they ever were when he was actually president.

“The question is,” wondered one person who worked on Obama’s campaign plans and acknowledged his poor track record at getting anyone but himself elected, “will it translate?”

On Friday in Miami, at least, it translated: Obama connected the 2018 election to the one that made him president 10 years ago, predicting a Democratic resurgence answering years of Republican entrenchment. But he warned against complacency, reminding Democrats of the scare tactics Republicans used to such devastating midterm effect in 2010 with the “death panels” and in 2014 with the “Ebola scare.”

That, Obama said, is what Democrats need to be worried about in these final days of the campaign, as President Trump has piled a conveniently timed announcement about reimplementing Iran sanctions on top of a video of an immigrant cop killer, on top of promises to revoke birthright citizenship, on top of warnings that a distant immigrant caravan is a terrorist invasion, on top of claims that Democrats were the only ones standing in the way of a middle-class tax cut he lied about producing before the election.

“Too often we fall for it. Too often we fall for the distraction,” Obama said, comparing Democrats to Charlie Brown, every time going in to kick the football Republicans throw up right before the election and never talk about again, as happened with the death panels, Ebola, and Clinton’s emails.

It’s like listening to a scam artist pretending to sell a security system, Obama said, while his partner goes around the back and steals what’s in the house.

“Don’t be Charlie Brown,” Obama said. “While you’re distracted, they’re also robbing you blind.”

Back when Bill Clinton delivered the speech at the 2012 Democratic convention that helped stabilize Obama’s reelection campaign and earned him the grateful “explainer in chief” nickname, Obama aides fantasized about a day when their guy would be the loved one, the one so much in demand. They didn’t expect that day to arrive so soon.