No longer the candidate, Biden reemerges as top surrogate for Harris campaign

Washington (CNN) — President Joe Biden reemerges on the campaign trail this week, entering a new political phase as he closes out his time in the White House and works to ensure Vice President Kamala Harris succeeds him.

Biden and Harris will kick off the final sprint to the election together on Labor Day, using the holiday to woo working-class voters with an event at a local union hall in Pittsburgh – a symbolic show of force in a city Biden himself often turned to at key points in his political career.

Biden’s campaign travel comes as he’s also navigating the latest developments in the Middle East after the Israeli military recovered the bodies of six hostages it says were killed by Hamas in Gaza. This included Israeli American Hersh Goldberg-Polin, whose parents Biden and Harris each spoke to on Sunday.

The carefully crafted return to the campaign trail comes as the president is shifting from candidate to surrogate mode after abandoning his own bid for a second term. Biden told reporters he’s looking forward to hitting the campaign trail after a two-week vacation in California and Delaware. His advisers have spent the past few weeks sketching out what his fall plans will entail on the campaign trail as he looks to burnish his legacy, sources familiar with the situation said.

The president is emerging with an initial roadmap running through Pennsylvania, Wisconsin and Michigan over the next five days, visiting the critical “blue wall” states where he narrowly beat former President Donald Trump in 2020. It will include a mix of campaign and official events to promote popular agenda items, offering a blueprint for how he’ll be deployed in the coming months.

His reentry also coincides with Harris scaling back her own public appearances as she shifts her focus to preparing for the September 10 presidential debate. Biden is filling the gap on her behalf in key battleground states this week.

Biden, who has seen a small uptick in his approval rating in some polls since ending his reelection campaign, is expected to spend a substantial amount of time in Pennsylvania, the state where he was born and where allies hope his political capital can help Harris. It’s a state Biden believes the vice president has “got to win,” and he’s indicated he’s spoken with Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro about launching a tour in the commonwealth.

Democratic allies also believe Biden will continue to hold sway with blue-collar voters and older voters, who made up an important bloc of the president’s backing in his 2024 bid even as he saw a dwindling in support from other key groups.

There is close coordination between the West Wing, the vice president’s office and the campaign on plans to get Biden on the road where most helpful, a source familiar with the matter said. Exactly where and how often he is deployed could evolve as the race progresses, sources said, as Harris’ campaign faces a truncated period to make its case to voters.

Discussions also are underway to determine how the president can be utilized on the fundraising circuit in the fall, sources said.

The teams have yet to determine how often Biden and Harris will campaign together, with one ally saying there could be a “divide and conquer” approach in the lead-up to Election Day.

The president has indicated he’s willing to do whatever is needed in the campaign, a source familiar with the dynamic said, because in the White House’s view, he has taken “a huge gamble” in stepping aside, “and it has to work.”

Biden this week will hold White House events in a rural area of southwestern Wisconsin, where he’ll focus on investments in clean energy jobs and efforts to combat climate change, and in Michigan, where he’ll highlight job creation in a local community.

“He’s actually going to participate in the campaign and lay out what the administration has done. That’s one of the key things that needs to be emphasized,” said former Delaware Sen. Ted Kaufman, a close friend and longtime adviser of Biden. “It’s all hands on deck.”

But it could prove a fine line for Democrats to walk as Republicans are eager to tie Harris to what they view as failed Biden policies on issues including immigration and the economy, areas where Trump has performed better in polls throughout the campaign.

Even as she’s pushed for a “new way forward,” Harris has yet to distance herself from Biden’s record on domestic or foreign policy. But she has tapped into different messaging strategies, including an economic pitch focused on affordability around issues such as grocery prices and housing.

In a sit-down interview with CNN last week, Harris defended the president’s economic record and brushed aside questions about why she has not acted on the new items she’s proposing on the campaign trail during her term as vice president.

“We had to recover as an economy, and we have done that,” she said, pointing to her work with Biden to reduce inflation and lower prescription drug costs.

“There’s more to do, but that’s good work,” she said.

Harris also offered praise to her former running mate, telling CNN that Biden “has the intelligence, the commitment, and the judgment and disposition that I think the American people rightly deserve in their president.”

Doing the job

On top of looking to boost Harris’ candidacy, the president is also using this period to zero in on key goals on domestic and foreign policy that he wants to address before leaving office,

Ben LaBolt, White House communications director, said the president will be “leaning in heavily” to campaign for Harris while also focusing on governing.

“The schedule will be robust, and he plans to leave it all on the field in securing as much progress as possible for hard-working Americans, be that through implementation or legislative action,” LaBolt said.

Biden has pressed his team to focus on the implementation of key legislation and efforts to lower costs, along with work on legacy issues such as the “Cancer Moonshot” initiative, supporting veterans, combating gun violence, and stewardship of artificial intelligence, among other priorities.

Working toward an end to the conflict between Israel and Hamas remains a key priority for the president, who has recently placed separate calls to the leaders of Israel, Egypt and Qatar to push along efforts to reach a ceasefire and hostage deal.

“It’s time this war ended,” Biden said Saturday. “I think we’re on the verge of having an agreement. It’s time to end it. It’s time to finish it.”

The war in Ukraine is also a top agenda item for Biden in his final months in office. He recently spoke with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, who dispatched senior officials to Washington last week.

The president, no longer constrained by the demands of the campaign trail, is also expected to travel abroad, considering trips to Poland, the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation summit in Peru, the G20 Summit in Brazil, and Africa, where he has long promised a visit. He is also expected to attend the annual United Nations General Assembly gathering in New York next month.

It can be beneficial to Harris to have Biden on the world stage meeting with his counterparts and reaffirming US leadership.

“He’s teeing her up for success by refreshing those relationships – and no one is better at that,” a former US official said.

Where Biden could help

With his decision to step aside, Biden has made the transition from principal to surrogate, acknowledging the new dynamic in his remarks at the Democratic National Convention last month.

“I promise I’ll be the best volunteer the Harris-Walz campaign has ever seen,” he said.

Biden’s service and legacy were widely lauded that evening in Chicago, but the three following days of convention programming turned toward the party’s future. Still, he maintains popularity with some key demographics that will be critical this November.

Though he was forced out of the 2024 race over concerns about his age and ability to campaign, some polls have shown Biden’s approval ratings move up. The president’s approval rating sits at 41%, according to the CNN Poll of Polls – up from 37% in July.

“He’s going to be a particularly powerful surrogate for the vice president because he is well-liked, and he will be well remembered,” said Mitch Landrieu, a co-chair of the Harris campaign who worked with the president and vice president in the White House. “His selfless act to step down has given him an incredible amount of credibility.”

Biden, AFL-CIO President Liz Shuler said in an interview with CNN, will be “the ultimatevalidator” for Harris with union workers. Shuler has noted that 1 in 5 voters in blue wall states Michigan, Wisconsin and Minnesota are union voters, and 22% of Pennsylvania voters are union voters – a group that roundly favors Harris.

“He would be very motivating for people, and it’ll be just yet another asset that the campaign has in its toolbox that they can deploy,” Shuler said.

Biden will also be a key surrogate for Harris among older voters. While he lost ground with several key demographics while he was in the 2024 race, the president made significant inroads with older voters, a group that has typically voted for Republicans.

In their first event together after Biden bowed out of the race, the president and vice president focused on Medicare’s ability to negotiate the price of prescription drugs, an issue that could resonate with senior voters.

The Pennsylvania factor

Biden has made no secret how important Pennsylvania will be in the November election. He moved the state back to the blue column in 2020, beating Trump there by less than 2 percentage points.

“We have got to win Pennsylvania, my original home state. (Shapiro) and I are putting together a campaign tour in Pennsylvania,” Biden said in an interview with CBS’ “Sunday Morning” last month. “I’m gonna be campaigning in other states as well. And I’m gonna do whatever Kamala thinks I can do to help most.”

Biden’s victory in 2020 stemmed from driving out support in the Philadelphia area and appealing to voters in the western and northeastern parts of the state, including the area where his beloved Scranton is based.

“Joe Biden, I think, proved uniquely capable of clawing back the carpenters, teamsters, laborers who had drifted away to Trump in 2016,” Conor Lamb, a former congressman from Pennsylvania, said of Biden’s work in the northeastern and western regions of the state.

The president and vice president are set to campaign together in Allegheny County where Biden’s campaign saw growth in support in 2020 compared to former Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton’s run against Trump one cycle before.

It’s also an area that’s helped shape Biden’s political career.

In 2015, he jogged down a Labor Day parade route in downtown Pittsburgh to chants of “Run, Joe, run!” at a time when he was weighing a late entry into the Democratic primary. He ultimately decided against launching a campaign as he continued to grapple with the death of his son Beau.

Biden returned to that same Labor Day parade as he mulled entering the 2020 race. And Pittsburgh is where he started and ended that run for the White House – kicking things off with a rally with union workers in April 2019 and then returning on the eve of the election for an outdoor car rally featuring Lady Gaga.

Now Biden will turn back to that city as he enters a new chapter in his more than five decades in politics, looking to boost his chosen successor Harris, who he’s said will make “one hell of a president.”

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