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By Cleve R. Wootson Jr., The Washington Post (c) 2024
Former president Barack Obama will campaign for Vice President Kamala Harris in the month leading up to Election Day, kicking off his efforts with a trip to Pittsburgh on Thursday, according to a senior campaign official who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss unannounced campaign activity.
Obama senior adviser Eric Schultz said in a news release that the former president is doing “everything he can to help elect Vice President Harris” and Democrats across the country.
“Now that voting has begun, our focus is on persuading and mobilizing voters, especially in states with key races,” Schultz said. “Many of these races are likely to go down to the wire and nothing should be taken for granted.”
Obama, the country’s first Black president, is the nation’s most popular Democrat and still wields considerable influence in his party. After President Joe Biden’s faltering debate performance against Donald Trump, Obama told allies that the president needed to reconsider whether his candidacy was viable. Obama and his wife, Michelle, endorsed Harris shortly after Biden left the presidential race and Harris became the presumptive nominee. Since then, the Obamas have said Harris represents a continuation of the same vision of America that helped Obama make history in 2008.
“If we work like we’ve never worked before, if we hold firm to our convictions – we will elect Kamala Harris as the next President of the United States,” Obama said at the Democratic National Convention in August. “We’ll elect leaders up and down the ballot who will fight for the hopeful, forward-looking America we all believe in.”
Harris was an early supporter of Obama, traveling to Iowa during the 2008 campaign to knock on doors for him. The two of them have a relationship that stretches back two decades.
Obama’s efforts so far on her behalf – fundraising content and events that feature him – have raised $76 million for the presidential campaign this cycle, in addition to events for various fundraising arms of the Democratic Party. Obama will participate in more of those activities in the coming month, and travel the country to mobilize voters for Harris and other Democrats.
Obama has played an increasingly active role in campaign efforts, including headlining a Los Angeles fundraiser last month that raised $4 million for Harris.
The announcement of Obama’s increased activity comes during a week that Harris’s campaign has touted several Republican endorsements, including by former congresswoman Liz Cheney. Many Democrats see the vice president as the natural inheritor of the multicultural, multiracial coalition that put Obama into office.
Obama was the featured speaker on the second night of the Democratic National Convention, opining on Trump’s “weird obsession with crowd sizes,” a line that had been featured in Harris campaign ads needling her opponent.
Harris’s ascension to the top of the ticket has brought parity to the presidential race, and the race remains effectively tied in the key battleground states that will probably decide the outcome of the election.
The two sides have not agreed to another presidential debate, and time is dwindling to do anything that will substantively change the race.
In his DNC speech, Obama warned that Democrats shouldn’t become complacent because of Harris’s fundraising success or her initial success in closing the polling gap.
“And make no mistake: It will be a fight,” he said. “For all the incredible energy we’ve been able to generate over the last few weeks, for all the rallies and the memes, this will still be a tight race in a closely divided country.”
