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As the 2024 presidential election for the White House race draws closer, former US President Barack Obama has hit the campaign trail of Kamala Harris on Thursday, in a bid to get out the votes in the critical swing state of Pennsylvania.
Obama is hitting the campaign trail in the steel city of Pittsburgh a day after Harris’s Republican rival Donald Trump charged through the must-win state.
The Democrat will be urging people to vote early in person or by mail.
Trump rallied on Wednesday in President Joe Biden’s childhood hometown of Scranton, Pennsylvania and will head on Thursday to the auto industry capital of Detroit in Michigan, another battleground.
Harris will head to yet another swing state, Nevada, to reach out to Latino voters but the White House said she would be kept informed throughout the day about Hurricane Milton.
The monster hurricane crashed into Florida late Wednesday with Biden warning that it could be the “storm of the century.”
Obama’s trip to Pennsylvania is the first stop in what will be a month of campaigning for Harris in the seven swing states where the 2024 election is likely to be decided.
The campaign for the White House race remains neck-and-neck between Harris and Trump both nationally and in the battleground states, including Pennsylvania.
Harris’s campaign is seeking Obama mobilisation power to win Blacks and young voters as she seeks top on November 5, election.
But Obama’s main message on Thursday will be to drive home the early voting message in an agonisingly close race.
“President Obama believes the stakes of this election could not be more consequential and that is why he is doing everything he can to help elect Vice President Harris,” Obama’s senior advisor Eric Schultz said in a statement.
Obama and former first lady Michelle Obama delivered rapturous speeches backing Harris at the Democratic National Convention in his hometown of Chicago in August.
He portrayed Harris — America’s first woman, Black and South Asian vice president — as the political heir to his own trailblazing path.
Obama led the crowd in chants of “Yes she can” — a riff on the “Yes he can” chants from his own 2008 campaign — but warned that 2024 would “still be a tight race in a closely divided country.”
The ex-president has also pulled in more than $76 million for the Democratic ticket in this year’s presidential race.
The ex-president endorsed Harris, 59, after Biden dramatically dropped out of the White House race in July.
