What will it take to stop Donald Trump from being re-elected as president of the USA?
Recent polls giving Democratic Party candidate Joe Biden a two-digit lead and even a bout of coronavirus don't seem to have slowed the sitting president down. In fact he seems rejuvenated and supremely confident, dancing like your dad to 'YMCA' by The Village People on stage at 10,000-strong rallies.
By contrast, Biden looks tired, confused and grumpy. His few socially-distanced campaign stops have struggled to draw crowds of more than a hundred.
So this week the Democrats wheeled out their golden child, their talismanic leader Barack Obama, to try and carry his doddering former vice-president over the finishing line. His first gig was this week in Philadelphia, the biggest city in the key swing state of Pennsylvania - where Biden was born and where Trump won in 2016.
“We cannot be complacent, I don't care about the polls," Obama said, "We can’t just imagine a better future, we have to fight for it, we have to outwork the other side, we have to out-hustle the other side. Vote like never before and leave no doubt."
Obama's grand return at the Philly rally on Wednesday was definitely bigger than Biden's October 12 appearance at the United Auto Workers union local in in Toledo, Ohio. More than 300 cars turned up in the parking lot, according to the campaign team, compared to just 30 in Ohio, where they were outnumbered by a pro-Trump counter-protest.
But compare that to the rock concert-style image of a black DEMOCRAT state legislator Vernon Jones crowd-surfing over a sea of 7,000 red MAGA-hatted Trump fans outside Macon, Georgia, a city with a population less than a twentieth of the the Philly metro area. There's something happening here, indeed.
Winning back the swingers
It may not chime with the Democrat's "basket of deplorables" narrative about Trump's supporters, but The Donald won in 2016 in large part thanks to the votes of people who backed Obama in 2008 and 2012.
Democrats are hoping Obama's return to the scene - coupled with the nostalgia factor of running his old VP for president - may help win some of them back.
"The Obama-Trump voter is going to make the difference in this election," said former Biden staffer Moe Vela in May. "Joe Biden gives them a chance to come back."
And Obama's presence on the campaign trail could help Biden simply by motivating Democrat supporters who might otherwise not bother to vote.