URBANA, Ill. — Former President Barack Obama, who has mostly stayed out of the political spotlight since leaving office, traveled to Urbana Friday to give his first speech in a series that he is expected to make leading up to the 2018 midterm election in November.More than 1,000 University of Illinois students and at least a dozen lawmakers and candidates filed into the Foellinger Auditorium on the Urbana-Champaign campus to hear remarks about the importance of the upcoming election.Obama started with a series of …