Former US President Barack Obama will actively support the campaign of Democratic presidential candidate Kamala Harris in the weeks leading up to Election Day on November 5th. As Harris’ campaign team announced on Friday, Obama will make his first appearance next Thursday in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, and will hold further rallies in the weeks following, especially in the particularly hotly contested states.
The ex-president attaches great importance to the outcome of the election on November 5th, said Obama advisor Eric Schultz. “That’s why he’s doing everything he can to help get Vice President Harris (…) elected.”
The 63-year-old still enjoys a lot of respect and influence in the Democratic Party. At the Democratic Party Convention in Chicago, where Harris was officially confirmed as the presidential candidate at the end of August, he and his wife Michelle gave much-acclaimed speeches.
The outcome of the election on November 5th is on a knife’s edge, Harris and Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump have been neck and neck in the polls in many places for weeks. Due to the peculiarities of the US electoral system, the election is likely to be decided in a few states, the so-called swing states, which in the past elections have sometimes voted for the Republican and sometimes for the Democratic candidate.
The states send a total of 538 electors to a college that determines the president. To win the election, a candidate must have at least 270 of these voters. In addition to Pennsylvania, which alone sends 19 electors, six other states are in focus: Michigan, Wisconsin, Georgia, North Carolina, Arizona and Nevada.
Obama, who was elected the first black president in US history in 2008, could use his appearances to mobilize black and young voters in particular for the Democratic Party. If Harris wins the election, she would be the first woman to lead the United States and also the first US head of state with Indian-African American roots. In his speech at the party conference in Chicago, Obama praised the 59-year-old vice president as his political heir.
His newly formulated slogan “Yes, she can!” (meaning something like: “Yes, she can do it!”) was repeated in chants by the crowd in the hall. The slogan is a variation of his saying “Yes, we can!”, with which Obama sparked euphoria during the 2008 election campaign.
