SCRANTON, Pa. — Sixteen years ago, Barack Obama made history by becoming the first Black president. Now Vice President Kamala Harris is enlisting him in her quest to make history and become the first female and first Indian American president.
Obama is set to host a rally Thursday in Pittsburgh, a crucial part of this battleground state that he carried twice and may decide whether Harris or Donald Trump wins the presidency.
Obama and Harris aides see a connection between what fueled his victories and the vice president’s theory of how to win: supercharge base turnout, max out with Black voters and “lose by less” in the vast rural areas where the margins can be make-or-break.
“They both effectively seized the mantle of change, not just through messaging but through an authentically fresh energy and mentality. That resonates with people in a personal way,” said Jesse Lee, a political consultant who worked in the Obama and Biden White Houses. “Just like Obama, the more she stays authentic and makes it joyous to be on her side — both in the campaign and as president — the more successful she’ll be.”
Lee said Obama and Harris both have middle-class roots and faced wealthy Republicans — Obama defeated Mitt Romney by winning the battle of who voters believed cared more about regular people like them, which he said Harris is on her way to replicating.
“A key element of both coalitions was the segment of people that were tempted by the ‘businessman’ but ultimately sided with the candidate who was looking out for people like them,” he said.
Paulette Aniskoff, senior adviser for Harris in Pennsylvania and a former Obama aide, told NBC News that she sees “similarities” between her current and former boss. That begins with a heavy focus by Harris on ground game and door-knocking, which was the “core of the sort of Obama organizing method.”
She said Obama and Harris share a philosophy of “showing up everywhere” and listening to voters, including in hostile terrain. But she declined to lay out specific targets of how well Harris must do in the cities, suburbs or small towns.
“The puzzle is how to make sure that we get enough votes out of everywhere, including the red counties. We can’t just run up the score in Philadelphia. That’s the old style of organizing — to just go into cities and mobilize,” Aniskoff said. “And when we’re talking about these really small margins that campaigns often come down to, that is how you win.”
Eric Schultz, an Obama White House aide who continues to advise him, said that while “no two campaigns are the same,” as times have changed, “there are some parallels.”
“What she has built feels larger than an electoral campaign and more like a movement that represents big ideas like freedom,” Schultz said. “She’s generated a level of excitement that has people rallying around her because of what her election may mean about who we are as a country. Her campaign has been smart and ambitious in using technology to reach young audiences and mobilize supporters.”
Harris’ Black voter puzzle
Central to Harris’ hopes is to dominate among Black voters and defuse Trump’s bid to make modest gains with younger Black men.
Former Obama pollster Cornell Belcher said there is “no actual evidence” that a high number of Black men are drifting to Trump in this election. In fact, he said, there has been a “phenomenal” rise in Black voter motivation to turn out since Harris replaced President Joe Biden on the ticket.
During the Obama era, the number of Black men voting for Democrats went up but then went right back down after he left office. “She’s got to earn the vote of Black men just like any other group,” Belcher said.
Trump and the Republican Party have made “an unprecedented lean in and targeting of African American men,” Belcher said. “Is it smart from a strategic standpoint? Yes, it’s absolutely smart on their side.”
But, he said, recent polling shows a shift among Black voters in the last month and a half toward Harris’ campaign. “Their motivation-to-vote numbers broadly, and especially in the battleground states, they’ve improved. … She has an opportunity, both in turnout and performance, to see an Obama-like performance by her,” Belcher said.
That’s a priority for Quentin James, founder and president of the Collective PAC, which launched a $4 million effort primarily aimed at engaging and mobilizing Black male voters for Harris in key battleground states.
“We want to make sure that Black men are showing up to vote in numbers that we haven’t seen since Obama. We think both the threat to democracy as well as the opportunity to provide an amazing future for our kids and our families is at stake,” James said. “And we can’t, obviously, just continue to be frustrated and opt out of the system. We actually have to show up and change the system at the ballot box. So victory and success for us will be record numbers of Black men showing up to vote in November.”
He said there has been an Obama-like energy with Harris.
“Whether it be fundraising, whether it be the rally sizes, this feels like the Obama days all over again,” he said. “And it’s an important moment to shut down and stop the MAGA movement.”
Trump changes the equation for Harris
Rallying a raucous crowd here Wednesday, Trump went after Obama and took care to emphasize his middle name, as he often does, a move critics decry as a racist dog whistle.
“Barack Hussein Obama. Has anyone ever heard of Barack Hussein Obama?” Trump said as the Scranton crowd lit up with boos.
Trump’s candidacy highlights a major difference between the Obama and Harris coalitions. Obama kept the Democratic margins of defeat down in the red rural areas before Trump ran them up sharply with a right-wing populist appeal. But while Obama struggled in the suburbs and among well-educated white voters, many of those voters have soured on the GOP in large part because of Trump’s inflammatory style and anti-democratic tendencies, giving Harris an opportunity.
Democratic pollster Anna Greenberg cautioned against thinking anybody can replicate Obama’s performances in 2008 and 2012, especially in rural areas and small towns where the bottom has fallen out for Democrats since he left the scene.
“Obama was a phenomenon in ’08,” Greenberg said. “But Hillary Clinton did terribly,” she added, suggesting that a reasonable target for Harris in rural America is somewhere between those two.
James, the Collective PAC founder, said Obama’s legacy is also at stake this year as he works to help Harris replicate that element of the coalition he built in 2008.
“This is also a bigger political moment where his legacy is at stake, honestly,” he said. “There’s a question of whether his elections were flukes.”
