Former President Barack Obama and former First Lady Michelle Obama endorsed Kamala Harris for president on a released video, the remaining leaders of the Democratic party to lend their support.
The Obamas join key party leaders House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, and former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi to endorse Harris. President Joe Biden endorsed Harris shortly after he announced he was ending his reelection bid on Sunday.
In the clip posted to social media, Michelle Obama told Harris “this is going to be historic,” in a phone call that included all three of them.
“We called to say Michelle and I couldn’t be prouder to endorse you, and to do everything we can to get you through this election and into the Oval Office,” Barack Obama added.
The announcement follows the endorsement of several labor unions including the United Steelworkers and Laborers’ International Union of North America, which voted unanimously Thursday to back Harris for president.
Also on Thursday, 40 former Department of Justice officials who served under both Republican and Democratic presidents, signed a letter endorsing Harris for president over her opponent former President Donald Trump. The letter said Trump is a risk to “global alliances and the future of democracy,” and as president, he “regularly ignored the rule of law.”
Hans Noel, associate professor of government at Georgetown University, says endorsements are especially important during nomination contests because it gives cues to voters and donors when the candidates can’t rely only on party affiliation.
“In the case of both Trump and Harris, the main effect of endorsements has been to make clear that they are the choice of the party in general,” he says. “It’s not that Harris got the support of Biden specifically, or Pelosi, or Obama, or anyone else. It’s that nearly everyone in the party coalesced behind her, and so quickly. So she is clearly the choice of the Democratic Party in general.”
For his part, Trump has won the endorsement of key Republican leaders in Congress including House Speaker Mike Johnson, House Majority Leader Steve Scalise and Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell.
“Similarly, Trump brought out long lists of Republicans to cement his status as leader of the party. In South Carolina, the home state of his last rival Nikki Haley, Trump was able to point to nearly every major state-level Republican, effectively claiming that he is the choice of the Republican Party,” Noel says.
Some major groups have yet to issue an endorsement including the Fraternal Order of Police, the nation’s largest police union, the United Automobile Workers and International Brotherhood of Teamsters, but the Teamsters’ president did speak at the Republican National Convention earlier this month, a first in the organization’s history.
The Obamas’ endorsement comes after Biden ended his reelection bid on Sunday and endorsed Harris as his successor. Harris appears to have reinvigorated the Democratic base, raising over $81 million in the first 24 hours of her presidential campaign and over $100 million in the first two days.
Harris also gained the stated support of enough delegates to become the Democratic presidential nominee, though an official vote still has to take place. The party’s convention begins Aug. 19 in Chicago, but Democratic National Committee Chairman Jaime Harrison said the party will select a nominee by Aug. 7 after a virtual roll call – a process that was already slated to occur ahead of the convention in order to bypass concerns about ballot access in Ohio.
Biden’s poor performance in the first presidential debate on June 27 led to calls for him to withdraw that ultimately proved impossible to overcome. Another debate is set for Sept. 10 hosted by ABC, but late Thursday, the Trump campaign said debate details can’t be formalized until the Democrats officially have a nominee. Since Harris began her campaign in earnest, the Trump campaign appears to have been caught off guard. Meanwhile, some polls conducted since Biden’s withdrawal show a tightening of the race.
“It would be inappropriate to schedule things with Harris because Democrats very well could still change their minds,” Steven Cheung, Trump campaign spokesperson said in a statement.
