Washington
CNN
—
President Joe Biden has returned to the campaign trail this week, entering a new political phase as he seeks to end his term in the White House and secure a replacement for Vice President Kamala Harris.
Biden and Harris are set to launch their final sprint to the election on Labor Day, using the holiday to rally support among working-class voters in Pittsburgh with an event at a local union hall — a symbolic show of force in a city Biden himself frequented at key points in his political career.
Biden’s campaign trip also comes amid the latest developments in the Middle East after Israeli forces found the bodies of six hostages in Gaza allegedly killed by Hamas, including Israeli-American Hersh Goldberg-Polin, whose parents Biden and Harris each met with on Sunday.
The carefully crafted return to the campaign trail comes as the president has shifted from candidate mode to surrogate mode after abandoning his own bid for a second term. Biden told reporters he was looking forward to starting the campaign trail after a two-week vacation in California and Delaware. Biden’s advisers have spent the past few weeks trying to burnish his record by plotting how he plans to campaign in the fall, according to people familiar with the matter.
The president announced his initial road map, which will see him visit Pennsylvania, Wisconsin and Michigan over the next five days, key “blue wall” states where he narrowly defeated former President Donald Trump in 2020. The road map will lay out the blueprint for the president’s activities over the coming months, combining campaign rallies and public events to promote his popular agenda.
Her return also comes at a time when she has scaled back her public appearances as she shifts her focus to preparing for the Sept. 10 presidential debate. Biden has been filling in for her this week in key battleground states.
Biden, whose approval rating has risen slightly in some polls since wrapping up his reelection campaign, is expected to spend significant time in Pennsylvania, his home state and where allies hope his political capital will help Harris. Biden believes it’s a “must-win” state for the vice president and has indicated he has spoken with Pennsylvania Governor Josh Shapiro about beginning a tour of the state.
Democrats are also confident that Biden will retain the support of blue-collar and older voters, who were key constituencies of Biden’s support in 2024 even as support from other key demographics declined.
Planning to send Biden to the most advantageous locations has been closely coordinated between the West Wing, the vice president’s office and the campaign, according to people familiar with the matter. Where and how often Biden is deployed could change as the race progresses, the people said, as the Harris campaign faces dwindling time to appeal to voters.
Discussions are also underway about how to use the president in fundraising efforts this fall, according to people familiar with the matter.
The two campaigns have yet to decide how often Biden and Harris will campaign together, but one ally said they may take a “divide and conquer” approach in the run up to Election Day.
The president has signaled he’s willing to do whatever it takes on the campaign trail, a source familiar with the matter said, because the White House view is that he’s making a “big gamble” by leaving office and “it should work out.”
Biden is hosting a White House event in rural southwestern Wisconsin this week to focus on investing in clean energy jobs and tackling climate change, and in Michigan he plans to highlight job creation in local communities.
“He’s actually going to be on the campaign trail and explaining what his administration has been doing, and that’s one of the key points that needs to be emphasized,” said former Delaware Sen. Ted Kaufman, a close friend and longtime adviser to Biden. “It’s going to take everybody in on it.”
But it could be a fine line for Democrats to walk as Republicans see Biden’s policies as failing on issues such as immigration and the economy and have been eager to link Harris to areas where Trump led in the polls throughout the campaign.
Harris, despite pushing for a “new way forward,” has not distanced herself from Biden’s record on domestic and foreign policy, but has utilized a different messaging strategy, including an economic appeal focused on affordability on issues like food prices and housing.
Harris defended the president’s economic record in an interview with CNN last week and declined to answer a question about why he won’t implement new measures he proposed during the campaign during his term as vice president.
“We needed to get our economy going, and we’ve done that,” she said, pointing to her work with Biden to curb inflation and lower prescription drug costs.
“There’s still work to be done, but it’s good work,” she said.
Harris also praised her former vice presidential running mate Biden, telling CNN that he “possesses the intellect, responsibility, judgment and character that the American people rightly expect in a president.”
In addition to backing Harris’ candidacy, the president is using the time to focus on key domestic and foreign policy objectives he wants to address before leaving office.
White House communications director Ben LaBolt said the president was “fully committed” to Harris’ campaign while also focusing on governing.
“The timeline is going to be rigorous, and the president is going to be committed to securing as much progress as possible for hardworking Americans through implementation and through legislative action,” LaBolt said.
Biden is pressing his team to focus on other priorities, including implementing major legislation and cost-cutting efforts, as well as addressing legacy issues such as the “cancer moonshot” initiative, supporting veterans, combating gun violence and managing artificial intelligence.
Working to end the conflict between Israel and Hamas remains a key priority for the President, and he recently separately called on the leaders of Israel, Egypt and Qatar to press ahead with efforts to reach a ceasefire and hostage agreement.
“It’s time to end this war,” Biden said Saturday. “I think we’re close to a deal. It’s time to end it. It’s time to end it.”
The war in Ukraine is also a top priority for President Biden in his final months in office, and he recently met with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, who sent a senior official to Washington last week.
Freed from the restrictions of election campaigning, the president is expected to consider overseas visits, including the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) summits in Poland and Peru, the G20 summit in Brazil and Africa, which he has previously promised to visit, as well as attending the United Nations General Assembly in New York next month.
Harris would benefit from Biden meeting with world leaders on the world stage and reaffirming U.S. leadership.
“Trump is helping him succeed by renewing relationships, and nobody does that better than Trump,” a former U.S. official said.
Biden’s decision to step down has seen him transition from leader to surrogate, a new dynamic he acknowledged in his speech at the Democratic National Convention last month.
“I promise to be the best volunteer the Harris-Waltz campaign has ever had,” he said.
While Biden’s accomplishments and achievements were widely praised that night in Chicago, the rest of the three-day convention program focused on the party’s future. Still, he remains popular among some key constituencies that will be decisive in November.
Though he was forced to withdraw from the 2024 presidential race due to concerns about his age and ability to campaign, some polls have shown Biden’s popularity rising. A CNN poll showed the president’s approval rating at 41%, up from 37% in July.
“He’s well-liked, which is why he’ll be a particularly strong surrogate for the vice president and be well-remembered,” said Mitch Landrieu, a co-chairman of Harris’ campaign who worked with the president and vice president in the White House. “His selfless act of stepping down gives him incredible credibility.”
Liz Schuller, president of the AFL-CIO, said in an interview with CNN that Biden would be Harris’ “ultimate endorsement” among union members, noting that one in five voters in the Democratic-leaning states of Michigan, Wisconsin and Minnesota are union members, and 22% of Pennsylvania voters are union members, a demographic that fully supports Harris.
“He’s going to be a great motivator for people and another asset in the toolbox that the campaign can leverage,” Schuller said.
Biden will also be a key voice for Harris among older voters, who lost support among some key demographics in the 2024 presidential election but gained significant support among older voters, a demographic that typically votes Republican.
At their first event together since Biden dropped out of the race, the president and vice president focused on Medicare’s ability to negotiate prescription drug prices, an issue that is likely to rally support among seniors.
Biden has made no secret of how important Pennsylvania will be in the November election, having turned the state back into a Democratic one in 2020 and defeating Trump there by just 2 percentage points.
“We have to win my home state of Pennsylvania. (Shapiro) and I are planning a campaign trip in Pennsylvania,” Biden said in an interview on CBS’ “Sunday Morning” last month. “We’re going to be campaigning in other states, and we’re going to do whatever Kamala thinks will best help me.”
Biden’s 2020 victory came as he chased down support from the Philadelphia region and appealed to voters in the western and northeastern parts of the state, including the area where his beloved Scranton is based.
“I think Joe Biden has proven he’s uniquely capable of bringing back the carpenters and the truckers and the laborers that flocked to Trump in 2016,” former Pennsylvania Rep. Conor Lamb, R-Pa., said of Biden’s work in the northeastern and western parts of the state.
The president and vice president will campaign together in Allegheny County, where Biden’s campaign saw growth in support in 2020 compared to when Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton faced off against Trump a cycle ago.
It’s also an area that helped shape Biden’s political career.
In 2015, while considering a run in the Democratic primary, he jogged down the route of the Labor Day parade in downtown Pittsburgh to chants of “Run, Joe, Run!” He ultimately decided not to launch a campaign as he continued to wrestle with the death of his son, Beau.
Biden returned to the same Labor Day parade when he was considering a 2020 presidential run — and Pittsburgh is where he began and finished his run for the White House, kicking off with a rally with union members in April 2019 and returning with an outdoor car rally featuring Lady Gaga on the eve of the election.
Now, as he begins a new chapter after more than five decades in politics, Biden is returning to the city to back his pick for successor, Harris, who Biden has said would be “a great president.”