Barack Obama will be campaigning for Kamala Harris next week, and she and her Republican opponent, Donald Trump, will be campaigning in battleground states that will decide the 2024 presidential election, which is just a month away. Preparing to cross.
Republican John D. Vance appears to have the upper hand over Tim Walz in Tuesday’s vice presidential debate, dominated by Hurricane Helen and controversial comments from Trump and first lady Melania Trump. A week later, former President Obama said: He hopes to inject new energy into the Harris campaign.
Meanwhile, Trump will return Saturday to Butler, Pennsylvania, where he survived an assassination attempt in July, to campaign alongside Elon Musk, who publicly supported Trump for the first time in the aftermath of the shooting.
Harris campaign officials say Obama is scheduled to kick off next Thursday in the crucial state of Pennsylvania, crossing a series of Rust Belt and Sun Belt battleground states in a bid to make a breakthrough in a largely neck-and-neck race. The blitzkrieg is about to begin. Dead heat.
“President Obama believes that the stakes of this election could not be more consequential, which is why he is committed to supporting Vice President Harris, Governor Walz, and Democrats across the country,” said Eric Schultz, senior adviser to President Obama. We are doing everything in our power to support the selection of statement.
Mr. Obama remains one of the Democratic Party’s most powerful surrogates, perhaps second only to his wife Michelle Obama. Her return to the campaign trail follows an impassioned speech at the Democratic National Convention in August in which she touted Harris as an up-and-comer and a natural member of a diverse, youth-powered political coalition. He was positioned as his successor.
“We don’t need four more years of fuss, clumsiness and confusion,” he told the convention in August. “We’ve seen that movie before, and we all know that sequels are usually worse. America is ready for a new chapter.”
On Friday, three Democratic Senate candidates in tight races in Michigan, Maryland and Florida released ads featuring the former president. This will be the first in a series of candidate-specific ads and robocalls that President Obama will record to support key opposition votes in close races, aides said.
Last month, Obama headlined Harris’ first solo fundraiser in Los Angeles, raising more than $4 million for her campaign.
Harris was one of Obama’s early supporters when he ran for president against Hillary Clinton in 2007. She continued to knock on doors for Mr. Obama ahead of the 2008 Iowa caucuses. In 2010, Obama endorsed Harris for president. She successfully ran for attorney general of California. At the time, he called Harris “a dear friend of mine.”
“I want everyone to do right by her,” he said at the time.
Obama remained publicly silent after Joe Biden’s disastrous performance in the debates against Trump this summer, but he acknowledged the president’s path to victory in November had all but disappeared. He is regarded as one of the party’s elder statesmen who contributed to the
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Harris’ campaign has a structure inherited from Biden and already includes several former Obama campaign staffers. They include strategist David Plouffe, Stephanie Cutter, who was Obama’s deputy campaign manager in 2012, and Mitch Stewart, who was Obama’s grassroots strategist on both campaigns. Mr. Stewart is Mr. Harris’ adviser in several battleground states, including Pennsylvania, which is seen as a must-win for both sides.
Musk said he would attend President Trump’s Saturday rally in Butler, the same place where a would-be assassin opened fire, bleeding the former president’s ear and killing one supporter.
“I’ll be there to support you too!” Musk replied to Trump’s post on X. “The Butler Saturday – historic,” Trump tweeted, including a dramatic photo of himself with his fist raised as he was dragged off the stage by the Secret Service during the shooting.
Musk, CEO of Tesla and owner of Company X, has increasingly pushed right-wing causes and amplified misinformation, but after the assassination attempt in July, Trump officially supported. President Trump was the target of what the FBI said was believed to be a second assassination attempt at a Florida golf club last month. Trump was unharmed, and the suspect was arrested and charged with attempting to assassinate the Republican presidential candidate.
As President Trump garners funding and support from tech industry executives in Silicon Valley, seen as a bastion of liberalism, Harris announced Friday that three prominent business leaders, including LinkedIn co-founder Reid Hoffman, will expressed support from people. Mark Cuban, entrepreneur and co-owner of the Dallas Mavericks. and Reed Hastings, co-founder of Netflix. The group has started a podcast titled “Business Leaders for Harris.”
Harris traveled to Michigan on Friday after attending an event in Wisconsin with Liz Cheney, one of Trump’s fiercest Republicans. On Saturday, while President Trump is visiting Pennsylvania, Harris is scheduled to visit North Carolina, another battleground state, to survey the damage caused by Hurricane Helen. Earlier this week, he visited the hard-hit battleground state of Georgia, where the Biden administration promised to provide federal funding to help victims. “We’ve been here for a long time,” she told residents.
During a visit to Georgia on Monday, President Trump attacked the Biden administration’s response to the storm, which has received bipartisan praise. When the state’s Republican governor, Brian Kemp, tried to call him, he falsely claimed that the president was “asleep.” Kemp refuted that claim.
Polling nationally and in battleground states shows Harris and Trump tied on average in polling. Some states are already mailing out ballots.
Biden, who left the White House on Thursday, expressed little surprise at the close margin but expressed confidence that Harris would defeat her predecessor.
“It’s going to be something close to this all the time,” the president told reporters. “She’ll do just fine.”
