Barack Obama is set to hit the campaign trail to support Kamala Harris as she faces off against former President Donald J. Trump in the upcoming 2024 presidential election. The campaign efforts, scheduled to begin in Pennsylvania next Thursday, come one month before Election Day as both candidates prepare to tour key battleground states. The recent vice-presidential debate saw Trump’s running mate, Senator J.D. Vance (R-OH), outperform Democrat rival Tim Walz (D-MN), leaving the Harris campaign on the back foot.
Moves by the Harris campaign to give Obama a more prominent role come as she is faltering among key Democratic demographics, including Latinos, Arab Americans, younger voters, and union workers.
The former president delivered a speech at the Democratic National Convention (DNC) in August highlighting Harris as a progressive leader and declaring, “We do not need four more years of bluster and bumbling and chaos.” However, this intervention somewhat backfired, considering Harris and Joe Biden are currently in office, not Trump.
HURRICANES.
With Trump rallying in Pennsylvania, Harris is traveling to North Carolina to assess Hurricane Helene’s devastation after previously visiting Georgia.
She promised federal support for affected areas, but there are widespread accusations that the Biden-Harris government, particularly the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), is not responding well to the crisis and may even be hindering recovery efforts.
Florida also faces an extremely powerful hurricane in the coming days, and further federal mismanagement of the aftermath could further damage the public standing of the government and, by extension, Vice President Harris.