LAS VEGAS — John Toles-Bey wants to be clear: He loves Barack Obama. Mr. Toles-Bey, a 62-year-old small-business owner, voted for the former president twice, after never participating in elections in his life. He now follows politics incessantly, an obsession he credits to Mr. Obama’s influence. He started a T-shirt company called You Can’t Trump God after Mr. Obama left office, because President Trump’s election sent him into a downward emotional spiral that only religion could counteract. But even as Mr. Toles-Bey waited outside one of Mr. Obama’s recent rallies, he wondered aloud if his political hero’s signature idealism had a place in today’s flame-throwing political climate. “It’s a different world we’re living in,” Mr. Toles-Bey said. “And we need something different.” As Mr. Obama has crisscrossed the country in support of Democratic candidates, nerves are rattling among some members of the coalition that fueled his historic rise from backbencher in the Illinois Statehouse to America’s first black president. A week of domestic terrorism has shocked the political system ahead of the 2018 elections. And while Mr. Obama’s speeches this election cycle have largely stuck with his trademark themes of idealism and hope, some of his supporters wonder if they’re witnessing a living time capsule from a bygone era of civil political rhetoric. Mr. Obama remains the top Democratic surrogate in the country, and he will be lending his star power to some of the most closely watched Democratic candidates during the campaign’s final week, including Andrew Gillum in Florida, Stacey Abrams in Georgia and Joe Donnelly in Indiana. But the election of Mr. Trump has tested the former president’s theory of measured change, his advisers acknowledge. It has also jaded some of the legions of voters Mr. Obama brought into the Democratic fold, including young people and minorities. Mr. Obama’s advisers say the former president sees “resisting” Mr. Trump and inspiring voters as a false choice. They point to his speeches this summer that broke with long-held tradition by heavily criticizing Mr. Trump, even if he rarely mentioned the current president by name. Still, like Mr. Toles-Bey, some supporters of Mr. Obama have come to want a fist, not a handshake, in an era when the new generation of progressives is hitting back harder at Mr. Trump than the former president usually does.
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