WASHINGTON: Former US president Barack Obama will bring his star power to Kamala Harris\u2019s election campaign Thursday in a bid to get out the vote in the critical swing state of Pennsylvania.
\nAmerica\u2019s first Black president is hitting the campaign trail in the steel city of Pittsburgh a day after Harris\u2019s Republican rival Donald Trump charged through the must-win state.
\nThe still hugely influential Democrat will be urging people to vote early in person or by mail as Harris looks to lock in as many votes as she can in a nail-biting race.
\nTrump rallied on Wednesday in President Joe Biden\u2019s childhood hometown of Scranton, Pennsylvania and will head on Thursday to the auto industry capital of Detroit in Michigan, another battleground.
\nWooing blue-collar voters in the former coal mining town of Scranton, Trump vowed to \u201cdrill, baby, drill\u201d for oil and assailed Harris on the economy.
\nHarris 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.
\nThe monster hurricane crashed into Florida late Wednesday with Biden warning that it could be the \u201cstorm of the century.\u201d
\nObama\u2019s 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.
\nThe White House race remains neck-and-neck between Harris and Trump both nationally and in the battleground states, including Pennsylvania.
\nHarris\u2019s campaign is counting on Obama, 63, who was president from 2009 to January 2017, to mobilize Black and young voters as she seeks the edge on November 5.
\nBut Obama\u2019s main message on Thursday will be to drive home the early voting message in an agonizingly close race.
\nDemocrats have historically favored early voting over Republicans.
\nTrump has meanwhile frequently lashed out against anything except on-the-day voting, repeatedly blaming mail-in ballots for his 2020 defeat by Joe Biden, which he still refused to accept.
\nThe Republican himself has also sometimes called early voting into question, despite efforts by his campaign to promote it.
\n\u201cPresident 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,\u201d Obama\u2019s senior adviser Eric Schultz said in a statement.
\nObama and former first lady Michelle Obama delivered rapturously received speeches backing Harris at the Democratic National Convention in his hometown of Chicago in August.
\nHe portrayed Harris \u2014 America\u2019s first woman, Black and South Asian vice president \u2014 as the political heir to his own trailblazing path.
\nObama led the crowd in chants of \u201cYes she can\u201d \u2014 a riff on the \u201cYes he can\u201d chants from his own 2008 campaign \u2014 but warned that 2024 would \u201cstill be a tight race in a closely divided country.\u201d
\nThe ex-president has also pulled in more than $76 million for the Democratic ticket in this year\u2019s presidential race.
\nThe ex-president endorsed Harris, 59, after Biden dramatically dropped out of the White House race in July.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
WASHINGTON: Former US president Barack Obama will bring his star power to Kamala Harris\u2019s election campaign Thursday in a bid to get out the vote in the critical swing state of Pennsylvania. America\u2019s first Black president is hitting the campaign trail in the steel city of Pittsburgh a day after Harris\u2019s Republican rival Donald Trump …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":71375,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-71401","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-world"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/71401","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=71401"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/71401\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":71412,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/71401\/revisions\/71412"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/71375"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=71401"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=71401"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=71401"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}