Obama to blitz campaign trail for Harris in final weeks before Election Day
(NEW YORK) — Former President Barack Obama will hit the campaign trail for Vice President Harris and Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz starting next Thursday, Oct. 10, through election day, according to a senior campaign official.
The first stop will be in Pennsylvania in the Pittsburgh area before Obama embarks on a campaign blitz across the battleground states in the final 27 days.
Obama held a Los Angeles fundraiser for Harris in September and — along with former first lady Michelle Obama — gave a speech at the Democratic National Convention in August.
Meanwhile, Harris recently enlisted the help of former Republican Rep. Liz Cheney on Thursday at a rally in Wisconsin.
Cheney, the former co-chair of the House committee that investigated the Jan. 6, 2021, insurrection at the Capitol, laid out former President Donald Trump’s actions on that day before telling the crowd, “I don’t care if you are a Democrat or a Republican or an independent. That is depravity, and we must never become numb to it. Any person who would do these things can never be trusted with power again.”
Cheney is among a handful of prominent Republicans, including her father, former Vice President Dick Cheney, who have pledged to support Harris’ bid, but her endorsement, as one of former President Donald Trump’s most outspoken critics within the party, is one that Harris hopes to leverage in crucial states like Wisconsin, whose margins are expected to be razor thin.
In August, Obama delivered the closing speech on night two of the Democratic National Convention in Chicago.
“We do not need four more years of bluster and bumbling and chaos,” he told delegates. “We have seen that movie before and we all know that the sequel is usually worse. America is ready for a new chapter. America is ready for a better story. We are ready for a President Kamala Harris.”
(WASHINGTON) — Former President Donald Trump will visit the city of Valdosta, Georgia, on Monday after Hurricane Helene wreaked havoc on the area over the last few days, while Vice President Kamala Harris is cutting short a campaign swing through Las Vegas to return to Washington to be briefed on the hurricane response by the Federal Emergency Management Agency.
On Monday, Trump will receive a briefing on the hurricane as well as facilitate the distribution of relief supplies, his campaign said. He is then expected to deliver remarks to reporters in front of the Chez What Furniture Store, whose owners posted pictures online of their store completely demolished by the storm.
Harris said she intends to visit communities impacted by Hurricane Helene “as soon as it is possible without disrupting emergency response operations,” according to a White House official. Harris, who was briefed by FEMA on the federal response to the hurricane, reached out to local officials, including Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis and Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp.
“We are deploying food, water and generators, and working to restore state and local leaders, we will provide whatever help they need in the days and weeks ahead,” Harris said Sunday while rallying in Las Vegas.
She will learn more from FEMA during meetings in Washington on Monday, according to a White House official.
Trump’s visit to Georgia comes after his recent criticism of President Joe Biden and Harris for their response to the natural disaster.
“She ought to be down in the area where she should be. That’s what she’s getting paid for, right? That’s what she’s getting paid for,” Trump said at his rally Sunday in Erie, Pennsylvania.
Trump has attacked Harris’ response to Hurricane Helene specifically, saying her delay in visiting the impacted region demonstrates that she isn’t qualified to become president.
Biden, while returning home from the beach on Sunday, was adamant that his administration was doing everything possible to help the affected communities.
Asked by ABC New is there are more resources the federal government could be giving, Biden responded, “no, we’ve given them.”
“We have pre-planned a significant amount, even though they didn’t ask for it yet — hadn’t asked for it yet,” Biden said Sunday.
Hurricane Helene’s storm surge, wind damage, and inland flooding caused deviation and casualties in Florida, Georgia, South Carolina, North Carolina, Virginia, and Tennessee, flooding neighborhoods, stranding residents, demolishing homes and toppling trees. The storm has killed at least 107 people and left dozens missing.
(WASHINGTON) — The House is expected to hold a vote Wednesday afternoon on a bill that would avert a government shutdown at the end of the month.
House leaders are confident the short-term measure, which will keep the government funded until Dec. 20, will achieve a two-thirds majority and pass the chamber under a suspension of the rules with the help of Democrats.
The move comes after Speaker Mike Johnson’s push to pass a funding measure that included the SAVE Act — a bill that would require proof of citizenship to vote — failed last week due to Democratic opposition and several Republican defections.
House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries said he supports the funding measure, but he pointed out that it has been House Democrats that have helped Republicans avoid shutdowns during the current Congress.
“Can anyone name a single thing that extreme MAGA Republicans in the House have been able to do on their own to make life better for the American people? A single thing? Just one,” he asked. “Can the American people name a single thing that extreme MAGA Republicans have done to make their lives better? Zip, zero. So that is the track record that will be presented to the American people,” he said.
Former President Donald Trump had called on congressional Republicans to allow the government to shut down over the SAVE Act.
Johnson told ABC News, “I am not defying President Trump” when asked if the former president approved of the new solution to avoid a shutdown.
“I’ve spoken with him at great length, and he is very frustrated about the situation,” Johnson said at his weekly press conference on Tuesday. “His great concern is election security, and it is mine as well. It is all of ours.”
Johnson asserted Trump “understands the current dilemma” with House Republicans and said, “there’s no daylight between us.”
The White House and congressional Democrats all slammed Johnson’s attempt to tie the voter eligibility legislation to government funding, noting that it’s already illegal for noncitizens to vote in federal elections.
But the “clean” short-term measure to avert a shutdown was praised by Democratic leaders and the Biden administration.
Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer on Wednesday said the Senate will “immediately move” to pass the measure as soon as the House sends it over, and “if all goes well in the House, the Senate should be sending President Biden a bill before the end of today.
“Americans can breathe easy that because both sides have chosen bipartisanship, Congress is getting the job done,” Schumer said on the Senate floor. “We will keep the government open. We will prevent vital government services from needlessly coming to a halt. We will give appropriators more time to fully fund the government before the end of the year. And I’m especially pleased we’re getting the job done with some time to spare.”
In addition to funding the government through Dec. 20, the bill includes funds to replenish FEMA and $231 million for the U.S. Secret Service in the wake a second apparent assassination attempt against Trump.
The White House Office of Management and Budget on Tuesday released a statement calling for “swift passage of this bill in both chambers of the Congress to avoid a costly, unnecessary Government shutdown.”
ABC News’ Allison Pecorin contributed to this report.
(CHICAGO) — When then-Sen. Barack Obama took the stage on Aug. 28, 2008, to accept the Democratic nomination for president, he did not mention the historic nature of his run. While he gave a nod to his midwestern middle-class upbringing and his Kenyan roots, the man who became the first Black president of the United States urged voters to unite and declared that the campaign was not about him.
“I stand before you tonight because all across America something is stirring. What the naysayers don’t understand is that this election has never been about me. It’s been about you,” Obama said.
Fifteen years later, when Obama took the DNC stage on Tuesday night, he delivered a resounding endorsement of Vice President Kamala Harris for president, Obama struck a similar tone. He did not explicitly discuss Harris’ racial identity as a Black and South Asian woman or her gender identity like Hillary Clinton did on Monday night when the former Democratic nominee passed the torch to Harris with a reference to breaking the “glass ceiling.”
“Kamala Harris won’t be focused on her problems – she’ll be focused on yours,” Obama said.
Harris, who embarked on a historic run of her own, would become the first female president and second president of color if elected in the 2024 general election.
She has spoken with pride about her Jamaican and Indian heritage, and when she ran for president in 2020, her campaign logo was modeled after that of Shirley Chisholm – the first Black woman to run for president – and when she addressed the DNC as vice presidential nominee, she paid tribute to the women of color in politics who came before her.
It is unclear if Harris will focus on her historic run when she delivers her own acceptance speech at the DNC on Thursday. But according to experts who study race, politics and the White House, Harris has so far not made her identity a central part of her 2024 campaign like Clinton did in 2016 and like Harris did in 2020 and has instead, taken a page out of the playbook that propelled the first Black president to the White House.
“[Like Obama], Harris is letting other people talk about her identity. So you’re putting out the surrogates,” Nadia Brown, a professor of government at Georgetown University who studies Black women in politics, told ABC News. “She’s not shying away from her identity, but she’s not centering this entire race and campaign on her identity.”
But is this a winning strategy?
‘Not more of the same’
Since President Joe Biden dropped out of the race and endorsed Harris last month, there has been a surge in “enthusiasm” for the Democratic ticket that crossed “generational boundaries,” according to Leah Wright Rigueur, a professor of public policy at the Harvard Kennedy School of Government, who studies race and the American presidency. This shift in energy was evidenced by the $310 million fundraising haul that her campaign raised in July alone, Rigueur said.
This surge in enthusiasm is reflected in an ABC News/Washington Post/Ipsos poll released on Sunday, which found that 50% overall say they’d be enthusiastic or satisfied if Harris were elected, compared with 36% who said that about Biden in early 2023.
According to Rigueur, the shift in “energy” is not merely a reflection of voters being excited about the historic nature of Harris’ run, but also indicative of the dissatisfaction with another matchup between Biden and former President Donald Trump – “a race between two really old white guys.”
“I think there is a real kind of excitement about the possibility of what Kamala Harris’ presidency represents,” Rigueur told ABC News. “And I think it’s also fair to say that it’s not simply that she is a woman or that she is Black or that she is Indian that is driving this enthusiasm, but instead the sensibility that … she’s refreshing; that she is new; that she is young, and that she’s not more of the same.”
But on the other hand, Brown said that like Obama, Harris has to strike a “balance” because in working to build the “rainbow coalition” she needs – one that includes independents and Trump-leaning voters – Harris is also navigating racism and the reality that some Americans are “not comfortable” with having a woman of color as president.
While “not more of the same” appeals to some voters, Brown said that for others, “it could be alienating.” This, according to Brown, is part of what informs why Harris has been focused on policy in her wider pitch to battleground state voters and has not centered the conversation around her own identity.
In her stump speeches and campaign ads so far, Harris has touted her middle-class roots – much like Obama did in 2008 – in an effort to connect with voters and make the case that she knows what it’s like to work hard, Brown said.
“She grew up in a middle-class home. She was the daughter of a working mom and she worked at McDonald’s while she got her degree,” a Harris ad that touts her goals to lower health care costs and make housing more affordable says. “Being president is about who you fight for and she’s fighting for people like you.”
According to Rigueur, Harris’ strategy to focus on policy and the people, instead of the candidate, is guided by an understanding that there “is a burgeoning of a movement that sees Kamala Harris as its vehicle, not its endgame.”
“There is something novel about Kamala Harris, and it’s something that she has chosen not to emphasize in her campaign,” Rigueur said. “And I actually think that’s a smart decision [that] she’s chosen not to emphasize it, and she doesn’t need to emphasize it because it’s so apparent – it is the elephant in the room.”
‘The Obama effect’
According to Rigueur, Harris is also navigating a political landscape where “the Obama effect” is at play, where there is “an emotional difference” between new generations who grew up with a Black president, “as opposed to, say, my grandmother, who never thought that she would live to see a Black man become President of the United States.”
“I think this comes out too, in attitudes towards what people think about [when it comes to] change and progress,” Rigueur said.
Brown echoed this notion.
“People put their hopes and dreams, I think, unrealistically, on Obama, because there just wasn’t a large civic understanding about how politics works,” she said. “Just the symbolism of having the first Black president was enough for many people that they didn’t question or look into his policy preferences. And I think the difference today is, yeah, people, know.”
And this is what Brown, who is conducting research at the 2024 DNC this week, found through interviews with protesters about how they feel about a Harris presidency and whether her racial or gender identity is something that inspires them.
Brown said she was “surprised” by how many young people of color expressed that they “don’t care” about Harris’ identity and are instead concerned with her politics, particularly her stance on the Israel-Hamas war.
“There’s a large number of people I’ve been surveying – talking to, here – who really disdain these boxes, right? They don’t want to, you know, identify as voting for a woman because they are a woman, and they want to talk about policy,” Brown said.
According to the latest ABC News/Washington Post/Ipsos poll released Sunday, 38% of Americans say that having a woman serve as president would be a good thing for the country, far more than the 14% who see it as a bad thing. The rest, 47%, say it makes no difference.
The poll also found that support from Black people has swung by 12 points in Harris’ direction, from +60 for Biden in July to +72 for Harris now. But Brown said having a Black candidate is not enough – particularly in a post-Obama world.
“Black voters want more,” she said, adding that Harris’ strategy has shifted and she is “going down a different path” in 2024 than she did during her 2020 presidential campaign by making more efforts to speak authentically to Black voters.
“Being in communities with Black people like going to HBCUs, showing up at these Black civil rights organizing spaces, talking about black maternal health,” she added. “Some of these things are showing it’s not that I’m Black, but I actually am part of these communities.”