Washington (CNN) President Barack Obama delivered an impassioned plea to the African-American community Saturday night to help stop Donald Trump, saying he would consider it a "personal insult" to his legacy if black voters didn't turn out for Hillary Clinton. 
 
 Addressing the Congressional Black Caucus gala for the last time as president, Obama warned that while his name would not be on the ballot in November, all of the progress that the country has made over the last eight years was on the line. 
 
 "If I hear anybody saying their vote does not matter, that it doesn't matter who we elect -- read up on your history. It matters. We've got to get people to vote," Obama said. "I will consider it a personal insult -- an insult to my legacy -- if this community lets down its guard and fails to activate itself in this election. You want to give me a good sendoff? Go vote." 
 
 Obama's speech -- coming less than two months away from Election Day -- marked some of his harshest words yet about Trump, as well as his most forceful call on the black community to get behind Clinton. 
 
 His remarks also had lighter moments -- particularly as he addressed the so-called "birther" controversy. The second-term president began his speech by remarking: "There's an extra spring in my step tonight. I don't know about you guys, but I am so relieved that the whole 'birther' thing is over." 
 
 Chuckling, the President said, "I mean: ISIL, North Korea, poverty, climate change -- none of those things weighed on my mind like the validity of my birth certificate. And to think: that with just a 124 days to go, under the wire, we got that resolved." 
 
 Obama was referring to Trump's admission this week that the president was born in the United States . Trump has long supported the birther theory, raising questions about Obama's birthplace and demanding that the president present his birth certificate as proof of his origin. 
 
 Obama's tone, however, soon turned serious as he outlined what he said was at stake in the election. 
 
 "You may have heard Hillary's opponent in this election say that there's never been a worse time to be a black person. I mean, he missed that whole civics lesson about slavery or Jim Crow," Obama said. "But we've got a museum for him to visit, so he can tune in. We will educate him." 
 
 In harsh rebuke of Trump, Obama referred to the businessman as "somebody who has fought against civil rights and fought against equality and who has shown no regard for working people most of his life." 
 
 On Trump's quest to win over African-American voters, Obama quipped: "Well, we do have challenges, but we're not stupid." 
 
 JUST WATCHED First lady Michelle Obama addresses birther controversy Replay More Videos ... MUST WATCH First lady Michelle Obama addresses birther controversy 00:51 
 
 Clinton lauds Obama 
 
 Speaking moments before the president, Clinton lauded Obama and also took on the birther controversy that has been swirling. 
 
 "Even when hateful nonsense is thrown their way, Barack, Michelle, their two beautiful daughters have represented our country with class, grace and integrity," said Clinton, who served as Obama's secretary of state. 
 
 She added, "Mr. President, not only do we know you are an American, you are a great American." 
 
 Clinton, who accepted the group's "Trailblazer Award" on Saturday night for becoming the first female presidential candidate for a major political party, nodded to Trump when she said that the choice in November "is not about golf course promotions or birth certificates, it comes down to who will fight for the forgotten." 
 
 "We can't let Barack Obama's legacy fall into the hands of someone who doesn't understand that, whose dangerous divisive vision for our country will drag us backwards," she said, though she never mentioned Trump's name. 
 
 Obamas stumping for Clinton 
 
 Clinton's campaign is relying on the Obamas to help persuade the coalition of minorities, young people and women who propelled them to the White House to cast ballots for this year's Democratic candidate. The President made his first solo appeal this week, appearing at a campaign rally in Philadelphia and phoning in to African-American radio to talk up Clinton. 
 
 "I get frustrated hearing folks say, 'You know, we're so excited with Barack, we love Michelle, they take Hillary for granted,'" Obama told syndicated host Frankie Darcell. "This is not a reality show. This is not something where it's all flash and fizzle." 
 
 On Friday, First Lady Michelle Obama made her first campaign appearance of 2016, trying to convince her and her husband's supporters at a Virginia rally that Clinton is also worthy of their votes. 
 
 "When I hear folks saying they're not inspired this this election, I disagree. I am inspired," she said, urging the crowd to register to vote and actually cast ballots for Clinton. ||||| It was part mockery, part shock-to-the-system wake-up call. 
 
 Donald Trump is a nasty, hateful charlatan selling a false message to African-Americans and the rest of the country that puts everything President Barack Obama has done in office and stood for at risk, Obama said Saturday night, in a rip-roaring speech to the Congressional Black Caucus Foundation dinner in Washington. 
 
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 Declaring he would consider it “a personal insult, an insult to my legacy” if black turnout falters for Hillary Clinton, Obama did what he got reamed for doing almost exactly two years ago, in the heat of midterm elections in which disdain for him was the defining force: Yes, he said, he is pretty much on the ballot in November. 
 
 “My name may not be on the ballot, but our progress is on the ballot,” Obama said, his voice rising to a shout as he went well beyond what sources familiar with the speech said was a tamer version of the riff in the prepared remarks. “Tolerance is on the ballot. Democracy is on the ballot. Justice is on the ballot. Good schools are on the ballot. Ending mass incarceration, that’s on the ballot right now.” 
 
 Hope and change was his campaign slogan eight years ago. This year, Obama said, Trump presents a nightmarish vision of change that he urged the country to reject. 
 
 “Hope is on the ballot,” he said, laying out the choice. “And fear is on the ballot too.” 
 
 Following Clinton on stage, Obama kicked off his remarks by taking on Trump’s attempt to move away from his long history of raising doubts about the president’s origins. 
 
 “If there’s an extra spring in my step tonight,” Obama said, smiling. “I am so relieved that the whole birther thing is over.” 
 
 Obama stressed that the issue isn’t just birtherism’s racism, but the kind of low-substance personality Trump has cultivated and brought to his campaign. 
 
 “ISIL, North Korea, poverty, climate change — none of those things weighed on my mind like the validity of my birth certificate,” Obama said, in a tone dripping with sarcasm. 
 
 “To think, that with just 124 days to go, just under the wire, we got that resolved. That’s a boost for me in the home stretch,” he laughed. "In other breaking news, the world is round, not flat.” 
 
 But mostly, Obama raged. Boiling hotter than at his fall campaign launch event for Clinton in Philadelphia last week, he let loose at a candidate he presented as an existential threat to black America. 
 
 The president sneered at Trump’s supposed appeal to African-Americans, being delivered almost simultaneously at a campaign event in Colorado, as the Republican ticked through a list of endemic problems and finished, “Vote for Donald Trump, what do you have to lose? I will fix it.” 
 
 “We do have challenges,” Obama said, rebutting him, “but we’re not stupid.” 
 
 Trump, Obama said, tells people that African-Americans have never had it worse, holding a beat to let the meaning sink in that the Republican nominee is making that claim as the first black president finishes his second term. 
 
 Trump “missed that whole civics lesson about slavery and Jim Crow,” Obama said, giving a plug to the new Smithsonian African-American Museum opening on the Mall this week. “We’ve got a museum for him to visit. So he can tune in.” 
 
 Using the museum’s opening to launch into a consideration of the arc of African-American progress, he said people who say their vote doesn’t count are an insult to the people who were beaten and killed registering voters during the civil rights movement. People who don’t stand up for their community, he said, shame the memories of the slaves who suffered extra lashes for learning how to read. 
 
 The job of everyone in the audience, Obama said, and everyone who cared, was to vote and to get more voters registered — not just to stop Trump, but to stop anyone who stands with him, and anyone who has backed voter ID laws targeted at suppressing black voters while pretending to chase a problem of mass voter fraud for which there is no evidence. 
 
 The worst part of those laws, Obama said, is that they are often backed by the same people who stop any kind of gun control measures, which does hurt the black community. 
 
 That, he said, shows that Republicans are “apparently more afraid of a ballot than a bullet.” ||||| An early voting station. | AP Photo/Jim Mone Weak early voter turnout among African-Americans hurts Clinton in Florida Black voters cast ballots in higher numbers in 2012 for Obama 
 
 Hillary Clinton has a black voter problem in the nation’s biggest battleground state. 
 
 After the first full weekend of in-person early voting ended Sunday, African-American turnout failed to meet expectations — or historic precedent — leaving top Democrats and activists fuming or worried that Clinton’s campaign isn’t living up to the hype in Florida. 
 
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 “They’re not doing enough in the black community. I have been screaming for months about this and nothing changed and now look what’s happening,” said Democratic U.S. Rep. Alcee Hastings, who represents one of South Florida’s largest African-American communities. 
 
 Hastings said he told Clinton aide John Podesta on a conference call last week that “you need to plus-up the spending in the African-American community and get out the vote.” Hastings said he was told someone would get back to him. “Nobody did,” he said. 
 
 African-Americans traditionally dominate early in-person voting. But they didn’t show in force this weekend. And Hastings said he wasn’t surprised. After Sunday night’s polls closed, black voters accounted for 16 percent of the in-person early vote ballots cast. And that included five previous days of in-person early voting. 
 
 But in 2012, in just two days of in-person early voting, blacks cast 25 percent of those early ballots, according to Dan Smith, a University of Florida political science professor who published some of the early voting data on his must-read Election Smith blog. 
 
 Due to such strong African-American turnout after the beginning of in-person early voting in 2012, Democrats began outpacing Republicans in total ballots cast before Election Day, by about 10,000. This year, though, Republicans still cling to their own lead of about 9,000. As of Monday morning about 3.7 million absentee and in-person early ballots had been cast, 40.5 percent of them by Republicans and 40.2 percent by Democrats. 
 
 “The black vote is way underperforming compared to 2012,” Smith said. 
 
 Clinton’s Florida communications director, Mahen Gunaratna, said Clinton has been campaigning in African-American communities throughout the state. 
 
 "From visiting historic Overtown [in Miami] to attending Bethune-Cookman University Homecoming and services at New Mount Olive Baptist Church this past weekend, Hillary Clinton has spent time connecting on issues important to the Black community in Florida,” he said in a statement to POLITICO Florida. “Over this last week of the campaign, she will continue sharing her vision of a nation that stronger together with the diverse communities that make up the coalition that will deliver Florida on November 8.” 
 
 Both the Clinton and Trump campaigns are blitzing Florida this week. Former President Bill Clinton is making stops today in Immokalee, Florida City and St. Petersburg. Hillary Clinton holds rallies in Dade City, Sanford and Fort Lauderdale. And President Barack Obama is in Miami and Jacksonville on Thursday. Trump will also stop in Jacksonville and Pensacola on Thursday after making Wednesday appearances in Miami and Orlando. 
 
 The black vote is not only crucial to Clinton but to any Democrat who wants to win statewide. Though 13 percent of nearly 13 million registered voters in Florida, African-Americans often give Democrats 90 percent of their vote. Although the margins are huge for Democrats, the benefit of the black vote diminishes with low turnout. 
 
 Despite their disappointment with African-American turnout, Democrats see reason to hope in the emergence of the Hispanic vote. Hispanics, who account for about 16 percent of the active registered voters, appear to be backing Clinton with at least 60 percent of their vote or more. 
 
 Compared to 2012, Hispanic voting is off the charts. As of Monday morning — eight days before Election Day — Hispanics had cast more than 507,000 absentee ballots by mail and in-person early votes. That’s 97 percent of the total combined early ballots that Hispanics cast in the entire 2012 election, according to an analysis from the Associated Industries of Florida, a conservative-leaning business group. 
 
 White voters so far have cast 2.6 million early votes eight days out, which is 80 percent of all the early votes they cast in the entire 2012 election. And mixed-race, Asian and other-race voters so far have cast 209,000 ballots, which is 76 percent of their 2012 total. 
 
 The lowest-performing group: African Americans. They cast about 421,000 early and absentee ballots as of Monday morning, accounting for 55 percent of the total early ballots that black voters cast in 2012, AIF’s analysis shows. 
 
 Excluding public-opinion polls by Republican-leaning groups, Clinton is narrowly winning Florida, according to the averages of the most-recent major public-opinion surveys. Donald Trump needs to carry Florida in order to keep his presidential hopes alive. His path to the White House therefore gets easier if blacks don’t make it to the polls in Florida in big numbers. 
 
 Campaigns closely monitor in-person early votes and absentee ballot returns by party. Though the ballots aren’t opened and tallied before Election Day, the numbers are used as a measurement to gauge the health of a campaign because the candidate whose party casts more votes before Election Day usually wins the election. 
 
 One big unknown: the 19 percent of independent voters — known as no party affiliation voters in Florida — who have cast ballots so far. About 66 percent of the early NPA voters so far are white and 18 percent Hispanic. 
 
 Race and party aside, another problem for Clinton right now might reside with young people. Millennial voters (ages 18-34) generally back Clinton, but they’ve only cast 402,000 ballots so far — 52 percent of their 2012 total, according to AIF. Those over 65 — who are most likely to support Trump — have cast the most ballots so far, 1.6 million. That’s 97 percent of their 2012 total. 
 
 Democrats aren’t hiding their concern. They thought they should be ahead in pre-Election Day ballots. And now they’re not. The Clinton campaign admits that one her biggest problems is that she has a tough act to follow: The first black president. 
 
 Democrats also hope that the remaining week of early voting — including the Sunday-before-Election-Day “Souls to the Polls” events at black churches ­ — will make the difference. 
 
 But for Congressman Hastings, that isn’t enough. He said he’d love to know how much Clinton’s campaign and her allies spent on TV ads in Florida instead of on the ground to motivate black voters. When told by POLITICO that Clinton and her allies have spent and reserved about $57 million in airtime in Florida since her campaign began, Hastings was aghast. 
 
 “Jesus Christ. And you can quote me on that,” Hastings said. “Just imagine if they hired someone like Mike, who has a felony record and can’t a job, but for $300 a week, he’ll work for you. And though he can’t vote his mama, and his cousins and everyone he knows will. That makes a difference.” 
 
 But Hastings said the campaign just wasn’t hearing it. 
 
 That’s no surprise to Leslie Wimes, an African-American activist from South Florida who in September told POLITICO that the Clinton campaign was in “panic mode” over what looked like a lack of enthusiasm by blacks for Clinton. The campaign denied it and Wimes was excoriated on social media by Democrats and liberals for speaking out. 
 
 “My reaction is pretty clear: I. Told. You. So,” Wimes said. “All their talk about enthusiasm in the black community was bullshit. Bullshit. In September, I said they had time to fix the problem. Now we’re a week away from the election and they can’t fix it. Let’s hope the Hispanic vote bails her out.” 
 
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– Members of the Congressional Black Caucus, some of whom may have been having a hard time getting excited about voting for Hillary Clinton, got an angry warning Saturday night about a Trump presidency from the man preparing to pack up and leave the Oval Office in January. "You may have heard Hillary's opponent in this election say that there's never been a worse time to be a black person," President Obama said in his final address to the group as president, per CNN. "I mean, he missed that whole civics lesson about slavery or Jim Crow," adding, "we will educate him." As for the black community's supposed indifference about this election, "read up on your history. It matters. I will consider it a personal insult—an insult to my legacy—if this community lets down its guard and fails to activate itself in this election. You want to give me a good sendoff? Go vote." More from the speech, which Politico calls "rip-roaring": On what's on the ballot: “My name may not be on the ballot, but our progress is on the ballot. Tolerance is on the ballot. Democracy is on the ballot. Justice is on the ballot. Good schools are on the ballot. Ending mass incarceration, that’s on the ballot right now.” Sources tell Politico Obama strayed significantly from a more staid version of the speech. On Donald Trump: He's "somebody who has fought against civil rights and fought against equality and who has shown no regard for working people most of his life." On the end of the birther controversy: "I mean: (ISIS), North Korea, poverty, climate change—none of those things weighed on my mind like the validity of my birth certificate. And to think: that with just a 124 days to go, under the wire, we got that resolved."