Associated Press
Former President Barack Obama and former First Lady Michelle Obama have endorsed Kamala Harris in her White House bid, giving the Vice President the expected but still crucial backing of the nation’s two most popular Democrats.
The endorsement, announced Friday in a video showing Harris accepting a joint phone call from the former first couple, comes as Harris builds momentum as their party’s likely nominee after President Joe Biden’s decision to end his reelection bid and endorse his second-in-command against Republican nominee and former President Donald Trump.
It also highlights the friendship and potentially historic link between the nation’s first Black President and the first woman, first Black woman and first person of Asian descent to serve as Vice President, who is now vying to break those barriers at the presidential rank.
“We called to say Michelle and I couldn’t be prouder to endorse you and do everything we can to get you through this election and into the Oval Office,” the former president told Harris, who is shown taking the call as she walks backstage at an event, trailed by a Secret Service agent.
Said Michelle Obama, “I can’t have this phone call without saying to my girl, Kamala, I am proud of you.
“This is going to be historic,” she added.
Harris, who has known the Obamas since before his election in 2008, thanked them for their friendship and said she looks forward to “getting there, being on the road” with them in the three-month blitz before Election Day on Nov. 5.
“We’re gonna have some fun with this too, aren’t we?” Harris said.
The Obamas are perhaps the last major party figures to endorse Harris formally, a reflection of the former president’s desire to remain, at least publicly, a party elder operating above the fray. The Obamas remain prodigious fundraising draws and popular surrogates at large campaign events for Democratic candidates.
According to an Associated Press survey, Harris already has secured the public support of a majority of the delegates to the Democratic National Convention, which begins Aug. 19 in Chicago. The Democratic National Committee expects to hold a virtual nominating vote that would, by Aug. 7, make Harris and a yet-to-be-named running mate the official Democratic ticket.
Biden endorsed Harris within an hour of announcing his decision Sunday to end his campaign amid widespread concern about the 81-year-old president’s ability to defeat Trump. Former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, House Democratic Leader Hakeem Jeffries, House Minority Whip Jim Clyburn, former President Bill Clinton and former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton followed in the days after.
The Obamas, however, trod carefully as Harris secured the delegate commitments, made the rounds among core Democratic constituencies and raised more than $120 million. The public caution tracks how the former president handled the weeks between Biden’s debate debacle against Trump and the president’s eventual decision to end his campaign: Barack Obama was a certain presence in the party’s maneuvers, but he operated quietly.
Obama’s initial statement after Biden’s announcement did not mention Harris. Instead, he spoke generically about coming up with a nominee to succeed Biden: “I have extraordinary confidence that the leaders of our party will be able to create a process from which an outstanding nominee emerges,” the former president wrote.
Both Obamas campaigned separately for Hillary Clinton in 2016 and Biden in 2020, including large rallies on the closing weekends before Election Day. They delivered key speeches at the Democrats’ convention in 2020, a virtual event because of the coronavirus pandemic. The former President’s speech was especially notable because he unveiled a full-throated attack on Trump as a threat to democracy, an argument that endures as part of Harris’ campaign.
___
Republished with permission of The Associated Press.
4 comments
Eula Miyamoto
July 26, 2024 at 12:22 pm
I MAKE UP TO $24 AN HOUR WORKING FROM MY HOME. MY STORY IS THAT I QUIT WORKING AT WALMART TO WORK ONLINE AND WITH A LITTLE EFFORT I EASILY BRING IN AROUND $45H TO $89H… SOMEONE WAS GOOD TO ME BY SHARING THIS LINK WITH ME, SO NOW I AM HOPING I COULD HELP SOMEONE ELSE OUT THERE BY SHARING THIS LINK.TRY IT, YOU WON’T REGRET IT!.
HERE..→ Www.pays77.COM
Muppet shooter
July 26, 2024 at 5:42 pm
The very fact that everyone admits he has been intervening behind the scenes and that his actions throughout this coup have not been transparent makes you all suckers.
It illustrates, via a humiliation ritual at your expense, that you are not sovereign, and that this is not, in fact, a democracy. Only a willful idiot would cheer it on. Did you just fall out of a coconut tree?
Ron Ogden
July 26, 2024 at 6:36 pm
I’ve asked before, and I will ask again: who is this man, that all you D’s just bend the knee? Who is this suave aristocrat, this modern Rasputin that he should control the fate of leaders, and how dare you call yourselves “democrats” when you stand gaping in awe at his political majesty? Democrats! The nerve of you!
KHISAMARXIST
July 27, 2024 at 9:50 am
Kamala Harris is a Marxist like Obama.
She is anti-American and anti rule- of -law (see the southern border) and a useful puppet for the D’s like Obama Schumer Pelosi who want to continue to flood our nation with illegals and give them taxpayer’s money.
Comments are closed.