Barack and Michelle Obama were still left. After several days of doubts about when they would come out in favor of Kamala Harris, the former US president and his wife offered their support in a video on Thursday for the woman who will clearly be the Democratic candidate for the November elections.
Obama was one of the last heavyweights in the party who had not yet expressed his support for Harris, who managed to gather enough delegates in just over 24 hours to obtain the nomination as candidate. This will be made effective, as agreed by the Democratic National Committee, in the first week of August through an electronic vote. Between the 19th and 22nd of that month, the National Convention is scheduled to be held in Chicago, which everything indicates will become a mere formality in Harris’ acclamation on the way to becoming the first female president in the history of the United States.
American media reported in recent hours that Harris and Obama had been in constant contact during these days, in which the party has managed to turn around its electoral prospects, encouraged by unprecedented enthusiasm.
Earlier this week, Michelle and I called our friend @KamalaHarris. We told her we think she’ll make a fantastic President of the United States, and that she has our full support for her. At this critical moment for our country, we’re going to do everything we can to make sure she wins in… pic.twitter.com/0UIS0doIbA
— Barack Obama (@BarackObama) July 26, 2024
The former president avoided immediately endorsing her on Sunday, when Joe Biden surprisingly announced in a message on X that he would not run for re-election, after weeks in which the doubts that arose in his first presidential debate against Republican Donald Trump, held on June 27 in Atlanta, set off all the alarms about his physical and cognitive abilities to win at the polls and to lead the country for a second term, at the end of which he would be 86 years old. In a second post, also published on X a few minutes later, Biden designated Harris as his successor.
Obama issued his own statement within hours of Biden’s resignation. In it, he praised the work and personality of the man who was his vice president during his eight years in the White House, but reserved his support for Harris. It was said at the time that because he was applying the same logic that guided his decision not to support any of the candidates in the Democratic primaries prior to the 2020 elections, such is the enormous influence that Obama still has over the party.
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“We will be navigating uncharted waters in the days ahead,” the former president said in that statement. “But I have extraordinary confidence that our party leaders will be able to facilitate a process that will produce a strong candidate.” Those words were interpreted as Obama’s desire for a mini-primary to select a consensus candidate.
Harris and her team spent the afternoon of that historic day calling congressmen, senators, public officials and delegations of delegates throughout the country to gather support, amid a rain of millions (100 in less than 48 hours) in donations. On Monday, the vice president won the crucial support of Nancy Pelosi, former speaker of the House of Representatives. And on Tuesday, in a single joint gesture, she received the support of Chuck Schumer, leader of the Democratic majority in the Senate, and that of the minority in Congress, Hakeem Jeffries.
The vice president’s campaign is counting on Obama’s appeal to attract Democratic voters, independents and undecided voters to the polls. Any help will be little for a candidacy that has been launched just 105 days before Election Day, scheduled for November 5. In the 2022 midterm elections, Obama got involved in the Democratic campaign in places like Detroit, where he held a massive rally that proved that his charisma remains intact a decade after leaving the front line, especially among African-American voters, who will be key in these elections.
Obama and Harris have known each other for years. She was an early supporter of his 2008 campaign and was chosen as a speaker at the 2012 Democratic convention when the then-president was seeking re-election. Obama campaigned for Harris when she ran for attorney general in California and supported her when she ran for Senate in 2016.
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