Obamas endorse Kamala Harris’s presidential bid
Former President Barack Obama and former First Lady Michelle Obama endorsed Kamala Harris's candidacy. NY Times poll shows her neck to neck with Trump. Harris challenged Trump to a debate.
Kamala Harris’s campaign for the presidency continued to pick political momentum as former President Barack Obama and former First Lady Michelle Obama endorsed her candidacy, a New York Times poll showed Harris neck to neck with Republican nominee Donald J Trump, and Harris went on the offensive with advertisements and challenged Donald Trump to debate her.
On Friday morning, Harris, Barack Obama and the former First Lady Michelle Obama put out a video of the moment when the Obamas called her earlier this week -- they didn’t specify when -- to offer their support.
In the 55-second video, Harris is seen walking as she gets the call from the Obamas. Michelle Obama is then heard telling her, “I couldn’t have this call without telling my girl Kamala -- I am so proud of you. This is going to be historic.” Barack Obama then said, “Michelle and I called to say that we couldn’t be prouder to endorse you and get you through this election and into the Oval Office.”
Harris then responded, “Oh my goodness. Michelle, Barack, this means so much to me. I am looking forward to doing this with both of you…The words you have spoken and the friendship you have offered all these years means more than I can express.”
The Obamas were the only major Democratic figures who hadn’t yet endorsed Harris, and while this sparked speculation, Democratic insiders said that President Obama wanted to let the process play out on its own rather than tilt the scales and be seen as expressing a preference at the outset. With Harris having secured the support of a majority of the delegates to the convention, she had already locked in the nomination before Obamas went public.
The fact that Harris will become the first Black woman to be a nominee of any major party — and potentially the first Black woman president — has triggered comparisons of the 2024 election with Obama’s 2008 election. That election, 16 years ago, charged the Democratic liberal base, brought young into politics with innovative use of social media and a message of hope, saw unprecedented levels of Black electoral consolidation, changed the electoral map, and led to a new generation of politicians rise up in the party, among whom was Harris as she found her feet in California politics in that period.
The poll bumpMore good news poured in for the Harris campaign on Thursday when the latest New York Times/Sienna poll showed that while 48% likely voters said they would vote for Trump, 47% voters backed Harris. This narrow gap is a remarkable jump for Democrats, for in the same poll held after the debate on June 27 that exposed Joe Biden’s age related deficits, Trump was leading Biden by six percentage points.
The poll also showed Harris as winning more support of younger voters below 30, and of Hispanic voters than Biden did. Her favourability ratings have increased, too, with 46% voters in July compared to 36% in February seeing her more positively.
But while it showed that the Democratic base is firmly with Harris now, the poll also highlighted the challenges that she will confront. This was the first poll conducted after the assassination bid on Trump, and his support among registered voters is the highest that it has been in the poll, according to an analysis by the paper’s chief political analyst Nate Cohn. While Harris’s favourability ratings have increased, 49% still express an unfavourable view of her. And among two demographic categories — White working-class voters and voters above the age of 65 — she enjoys less support than Biden did.
The Trump campaign had anticipated the poll bump for Harris. In a memo titled “The Harris Honeymoon” leaked on Tuesday, Trump’s pollster, Toby Fabrizio, had said that there would be a bump and that this bump would be a result of the wall-to-wall coverage that Harris received from mainstream media. “That bump will start showing itself over the next few days and will last a while until the race settles back down.”
But Fabrizio claimed that while Democrats will cite polls to show that the race had changed, the fundamentals hadn’t changed. He also expressed the confidence that issues such as inflation, immigration, crime, foreign wars and Harris’s “dangerously liberal” record will re-emerge to change the dynamics in favour of Trump.
Ads and debateThe Harris campaign also began to flood airwaves with an advertisement defining her and her candidacy, an urgent imperative given that just over 100 days are left for voting day, voters don’t quite know her, and the Trump campaign is now seeking to define her as a “radical Left/dangerously liberal” but also “weak” candidate in their own attacks.
In the ad, which showed crowds of supporters chanting “Kamala, Kamala”, Harris tells voters that the election is about whether they want to live in a country of “chaos, fear, and hate” — with Trump and his running mate JD Vance’s image in the backdrop — or of freedom. “We choose freedom,” Harris says in the ad, as a Beyoncé song on the theme plays in the background. “The freedom to be safe from gun violence: the freedom to make decisions about your own body...” The ad also makes a reference to living in a country where no one is above the law, with images and clippings of Trump’s conviction and cases. The Harris campaign has framed the contest as one between a prosecutor, leaning into the vice president’s background, and a felon.
The battle with Trump also manifested itself in a debate around the debate itself.
When the Biden and Trump teams agreed on the terms of their two debates, the second one was scheduled for September 10, to be hosted by ABC News. Soon after Biden dropped out, Trump said on Truth Social that Fox News should host the debate. On Thursday, Trump campaign spokesperson Steven Cheung said that “given the continued political chaos” around Democratic Party, debate details couldn’t be finalised unless Democrats finalised their nominee. The statement, issued before Obama had made his endorsement public, claimed that “Barack Hussein Obama”, Trump’s way of referring to the former president, didn’t have faith that Harris, “a Marxist fraud”, could defeat Trump and that it would be inappropriate to schedule a debate because Democrats could still change their mind.
Harris was quick to seize the narrative on the debate, as she posted on X, “Trump agreed on a September 10th debate. It now appears he’s backpedaling. Voters deserve to see the split screen that exists on a debate stage. I’m ready. So let’s go.”
