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President Barack Obama stands with Connecticut Governor Dan Malloy in Bridgeport on Sunday. Malloy is in a tough re-election battle with Republican Tom Foley. The president spent the weekend trying to energize the Democratic base to get out and vote in Tuesday's middterm elections. Spencer Platt/Getty Images hide caption

President Barack Obama stands with Connecticut Governor Dan Malloy in Bridgeport on Sunday. Malloy is in a tough re-election battle with Republican Tom Foley. The president spent the weekend trying to energize the Democratic base to get out and vote in Tuesday's middterm elections.

It's crunch time for campaign workers across the country. With the midterm elections just one day away, Republicans and Democrats are scrambling to turn out every possible vote.

President Obama spent the weekend rallying supporters in Michigan, Pennsylvania and Connecticut.

The last-minute swing was unusual for a president who's kept a relatively low profile on the campaign trail this year. But whether he wants to or not, Obama is playing an outsized role in shaping the political landscape.

The rock-star rallies of years past are a distant memory. But President Obama can still energize die-hard Democrats. He delivered a pre-election pep talk in Bridgeport, Conn., where Democratic Governor Dan Malloy is locked in a tight battle for re-election.

"Make some phone calls," Obama began. "Knock on some doors. Grab everybody you know. Get them out to vote. Don't stay home. Don't let somebody else choose your future for you."

This year many Democratic candidates find their future is in somebody else's hands namely Barack Obama's.

Handicapper Nathan Gonzales of the Rothenberg Political Report says Obama's sagging popularity is casting a long shadow over his fellow Democrats.

"If the president's job approval rating was 5 or 10 points better, I think we'd be talking about a very different election," Gonzales says.

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When 41-year-old gay rights lawyer Michelle Friedland was confirmed by the Senate in April to the federal bench in San Francisco, Democrats cheered that a liberal woman would become the youngest federal appeals court judge in the nation.

But when a restrictive Wisconsin voter-identification requirement was allowed to go into effect in September after the U.S. 7th Circuit Court of Appeals in Chicago deadlocked 5 to 5, Democrats winced. The law later blocked by the Supreme Court would presumably have been invalidated at the appellate court if President Obama had succeeded in filling a vacancy there now nearly five years old.

With Republicans striving to seize control of the Senate in Tuesday's election, Obama's first six years in office may mark the peak of his influence on the judiciary, including the appointment of two Supreme Court justices, Sonia Sotomayor and Elena Kagan.

Legal experts say it's a record of unprecedented achievements in judicial diversity. Women make up 42% of his confirmed nominees, more than double the average of his five predecessors combined, while African Americans make up 18% and Latinos 6%. Eleven openly gay judges now serve where there was only one.

"It's been quite an impressive record," said Sheldon Goldman, a professor at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst who studies judicial nominations. "A large majority of his appointments approximately 60% have gone to nontraditional candidates, people who are not white males."

Supporters are heartened that his most recent appointments, such as Friedland and Pamela Harris confirmed to the appeals court in Richmond, Va. have had more progressive views and records compared with his early choices.

And they are gratified that Democrats now hold a majority on nine of the 13 appeals courts, including the crucial District of Columbia Circuit Court of Appeals. Democrats had the majority on only three appeals courts when Obama came to office.

But there is also a lingering disappointment that it took the Obama administration several years to prioritize judicial nominations, making it harder to catch up with vacancies.

Despite a flurry of nominations over the last year which came after Senate rules were changed to make confirmations easier there are still 63 judicial vacancies, 10 more than when Obama took office. He nominated fewer than half as many judges in his first year as President George W. Bush did.

"It was a slow start, but once they got rolling and put some muscle behind the nominees, they started to get some people through," said Caroline Fredrickson, president of the American Constitution Society, a liberal legal group. "Originally the priority was on getting the Affordable Care Act through and the nominations process took a back seat."

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Obama's best chance to influence the judiciary may be passing

CHRIS BRENNAN, Daily News Staff Writer brennac@phillynews.com, 215-854-5973 Posted: Monday, November 3, 2014, 3:01 AM

PRESIDENT Obama came to the one place in Pennsylvania where he is still popular - Philadelphia - to stump yesterday for Tom Wolf's campaign for governor.

Gov. Corbett, seeking a second term but trailing Wolf by double-digits in many polls, probably wishes Obama tried his luck in any other part of the state.

Obama's approval rating is 51 percent in Philadelphia, according to last Wednesday's Daily News/Franklin & Marshall College Poll. His disapproval rating with registered voters in northeast, southwest, northwest and central Pennsylvania ranges from 73 percent to 76 percent.

The president was raucously received at Temple University's Liacouras Center, where about 5,500 people roared in approval.

Obama's task: boosting voter turnout in Philadelphia.

He acknowledged that many Democrats tend to skip voting in midterm elections, telling the crowd, "There's no excuse to just give away our power." He urged them to push others to vote.

"We've got some work to do because two days from now you get to choose your future," Obama said to cheers. "I need all of you to go grab your friends, grab your classmates, talk to your co-workers, knock on some doors, make some phone calls . . ."

Obama was interrupted by a woman screaming, "I love you."

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Obama stumps for Wolf at Temple, pushing for voter turnout Tuesday

STORY HIGHLIGHTS

Philadelphia (CNN) -- After a campaign season marked mainly by Democrats fleeing his shadow, President Barack Obama embarked upon the final push of what he calls his last campaign Sunday, hoping to mobilize voters in the few pockets of the country where he remains somewhat popular.

Obama headlined afternoon campaign rallies for Democratic gubernatorial candidates in Connecticut and Pennsylvania, capping off a cycle that saw him rally for only one Senate candidate and a handful of governors.

His diminished presence in 2014 amounted mostly to headlining high-dollar fundraisers in wealthy neighborhoods, mostly on the coasts, where he sought to motivate donors amid bleak prospects for his party in Tuesday's midterm elections.

In tight races across the country, Democrats have distanced themselves from his policies, declaring themselves independent from the White House as Republicans worked overtime to lump them into the same unpopular mold.

The President himself has fueled that effort at times, saying during an economic address in October that his "policies are on the ballot" and telling Al Sharpton during a radio interview that vulnerable Democrats are "all folks that vote with me."

Obama, whose presidential campaign drew massive crowds of young people and African-Americans in 2008 and 2012, has been working to propel those voters to the polls. Democrats have little chance of keeping control of the Senate unless traditional Democratic voting blocs turn out in force.

That was Obama's goal Sunday in Philadelphia, where he revved up a majority black crowd at a rally for Democratic gubernatorial candidate Tom Wolf.

"We've got some work to do. Because two days from now, you get to choose your future," he said, reminding the 5,500 attendees that the historic battle for the right to vote must be honored by casting ballots in midterm elections.

Obama reiterated that theme in Connecticut earlier Sunday at a rally for Gov. Dannel Malloy.

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Obama makes restricted election push

President Obama #39;s Motorcade in Portland Maine on 10.30.2014. HD 4K.
The #President came to the #Portland #Maine Expo Building today to rally for Mike #Michaud, candidate for Maine Governor so I went down to capture it in beautiful HD 4K video on my GoPro, but...

By: F Alzheimers

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President Obama's Motorcade in Portland Maine on 10.30.2014. HD 4K. - Video