BY BILL BARROW
Associated Press
FILE – Former President Barack Obama talks with Vice President Kamala Harris during an event about the Affordable Care Act, in the East Room of the White House in Washington, April 5, 2022. (AP Photo/Carolyn Kaster, File)
ATLANTA (AP) — 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.
I’m certainly going to vote against Trump but Kamala Harris’s rapid promotions do not appear to be based on her performance records.
She was dating Willie Brown, 30 years her senior, married but long separated who had been or was the speaker of the CA state House, when he appointed her to not just one, but two CA state Boards.
Though she never mentions him in her book, THE TRUTHS WE HOLD, he stated he assisted her in her run for San Francisco DA and CA Attorney General.
I’m from Orange County but left both the county and then the state terrified of corrupt police who could falsify reports, beat up inmates, and with the coroner who investigates all deaths in custody working IN AND UNDER the Sheriff’s department, they can and have killed people and hid the evidence.
She turned a blind eye to the Kelly Thomas beaten, which was not unlike the killing of Tyre Nichols at whose funeral she spoke and smiled.
She did nothing after ten unarmed residents were murdered by Anaheim police. I left in 2012. I had great admiration for ANOTHER WOMAN OF COLOR, Loretta Sanchez, who won a house seat in what had been an uber conservative district.
Sanchez was Harris’s opponent for that US Senate seat. I’ve never gotten a rational explanation as to why the CA Democrat Party Endorsed Harris, BEFORE THE PRIMARY. She’s probably the only hope, but only because she cut in line repeatedly.
I’ve never been able to even report what I witnessed. I still have the documents. She’s hurt a lot of people by playing both sides of the fence.