Vice President Kamala Harris’ 2024 role came into sharp focus this week as she took direct aim at former President Donald Trump over reproductive rights, laying the groundwork for a central Democratic message in the 2024 election and unveiling a more elevated role for Harris.
The Biden campaign is using Harris to help mobilize voters on potentially one of the most political issues in 2024 – reproductive rights – hoping to capitalize on her appeal to younger, more diverse voters. The 2024 campaign is shaping up to be a political test for the vice president, who has fielded fierce criticism over the course of Biden’s administration for her perceived low profile.
“Former President Trump hand-picked – hand-picked – three Supreme Court justices because he intended for them to overturn Roe. He intended for them to take your freedoms. He is the architect of this health care crisis. And he is not done,” a fired-up Harris said Tuesday, speaking in front of a massive “Restore Roe” backdrop in Manassas, Virginia.
The first years of her tenure as vice president was marked by tough assignments that proved thankless – taking the lead in diplomacy with Central American nations to try and stem migration to the southern border, taking the lead on voting rights legislation – along with some high-profile stumbles. CNN has previously reported that Harris had made her unhappiness with some of her assignments known within the White House.
But now Harris is embracing her role as a key voice on reproductive rights, which is set to be a central issue for the Biden campaign as it hones its message ahead of November, and she’s bringing the message to the campaign trail with a revamped energy that has been on full display in recent speeches.
The vice president has been positioned to send the administration’s message across the country in a weeks-long tour, drawing on testimonials to underscore the impacts of the overturning of Roe v. Wade.
Her tour is built on what advisers and campaign officials viewed as a success with her college campus tour last year and is an extension of the dozens of meetings she held following the Supreme Court’s Dobbs decision. And as the Biden campaign plots its general election messaging, she’s regularly hitting the former president for his role in the court’s ruling.
“The previous president expressed his intentions quite clearly. And fast forward to just recently, says he’s proud of what he did,” Harris told CNN’s Laura Coates during an exclusive interview in Wisconsin, pinning blame squarely on Trump for the reversal of Roe v. Wade.
It’s all part of a broader Biden campaign strategy that officials have been plotting for months, sources told CNN, aware of the need to mobilize young voters and voters of color amid waning enthusiasm and utilizing what they view as one of the vice president’s strengths: engaging with people on the road.
“Vice President Harris has a proven record of mobilizing our coalition to help secure wins up and down ballot for Democrats. Early in 2024, she is already traveling the country and meeting with voters about the issues they care most about,” Harris’ campaign chief of staff Sheila Nix.
“Looking ahead, she’ll continue to hit the road and highlight what is at stake to Americans across the country and remind them that she and the President will always fight for our freedoms and protect our democracy,” Nix added.
Trump won New Hampshire’s Republican presidential primary Tuesday night, moving him closer to a rematch with Biden, who secured his own symbolic victory in the state with a successful write-in campaign.
A key role for the VP
As the nation enters an election year, Biden and Harris hold similar approval ratings and the vice president’s ratings among key subgroups have varied, suggesting views of the vice president are not as deeply entrenched.
It remains to be seen whether Harris can motivate those constituencies to back Biden in 2024. Polling nationally and in battleground states suggest Biden, 81, is weak with young voters, as well as with Black and other voters of color. Harris and Biden staffers have been meeting regularly as they plot out their 2024 strategy.
That includes plans for the vice president to hit the trail — and often. There are also expected to be additional hires, including top political operative Megan Jones who brought on by the campaign and is based in battleground Nevada, to build out Harris’ team on the Biden campaign, signaling her robust campaign schedule in the months to come.
Harris is headed to Las Vegas over the weekend ahead of the state’s Democratic primary, marking her 10th visit to the state since taking office.
“We gotta earn reelection, there is no question. We gotta be on the road. … We have to earn the reelect and we have to communicate what we’ve achieved. And that is going to be one of our big challenges. We’ve done a lot of good work. We need to let people know who brung it to them,” Harris said on “The View” last week.
Harris – often a punching bag on the right – earned rare praise from Kayleigh McEnany, Trump’s onetime press secretary, for a recent appearance on “The View.”
“I disagreed with almost everything she said in this interview. I will say – it was one of her better interviews when it came to style,” McEnany said on Fox News.
Abortion remains a key issue in 2024
Trump’s role in gutting abortion rights – his three conservative Supreme Court picks all voted to overturn Roe v. Wade – is emerging as a core theme for Harris and Biden as they seek reelection. Reproductive rights have galvanized Democrats and proven a winner at the ballot box in the 19 months since the high court overturned the ruling.
At the White House on Monday, Biden met with his administration’s task force on reproductive rights, criticizing Republicans for trying to ban abortion and announcing new steps the White House is taking to expand access to contraception and other reproductive care.
The vice president’s event, meanwhile, put the spotlight on the Biden team’s plans to defend Wisconsin, where Biden eked out a win over Trump by less than one percentage point in 2020.
“Voters have already experienced the legal uncertainty and chaos caused by Donald Trump,” Biden campaign manager Julie Chavez Rodriguez wrote in a memo last week. “Now, despite the fact that abortion care is being provided in the state, Donald Trump’s plans to ban abortion access nationwide directly threaten Wisconsin voters’ rights.”
Wisconsin is an example of where abortion access remains under threat, fueling confusion and concern among providers and patients. Even so, Democrats and abortion rights advocates have seen recent victories in the state, which Harris touted Monday. The vice president is expected to visit several states to reveal the impact of the Dobbs decision, including states where abortion is banned and where it remains on the ballot.
Harris on the trail
Harris has spent much of January on the road, hitting crucial states that Biden needs to clinch a second term in office and where Democrats need to mobilize voters of color, including Nevada, South Carolina and Georgia.
“You can’t do a college tour and not be authentic because it will – you know, they’ll sniff it out,” Black Voters Matter co-founder Cliff Albright told CNN. “I think the more that she can tap into that, the better.”
“I think when people can see that she’s mad just as much as we’re mad. And she’s willing to fight just as much as we want to fight,” Albright said. “I think that resonates with people. I think it resonates for young folks.”
Over the course of multiple stops this month, Harris touched on preventing gun violence, the economy, and protecting freedoms – all key issues for the Biden campaign.
Harris has also been able to connect with Gen Z voters, who are more racially diverse compared with other generations, by talking about her multicultural upbringing and being the nation’s first female, Black and South Asian vice president.
That was on display Monday in a four-minute video taped last week and posted to social media platforms. Madelyn Cline – an actress and Goose Creek, South Carolina, native – interviewed Harris about the importance of the youth vote, signaling how the campaign is working to reach young Americans beyond traditional media outlets.
Harris is expected to convene and mobilize groups, issue leaders and organizations nationally and locally over the course of her reproductive rights tour, according to a source close to the campaign, adding that social and digital campaigns will be built into her travel and events.
The vice president’s aides have described Harris’ campaign plans as active, including fanning out across the country, helping raise money and campaigning alongside lawmakers up for reelection.
“I think it’s going to be an exciting time for her to be reintroducing herself in a new and different way in the campaign space,” said Democratic Sen. Laphonza Butler of California.
Senior campaign officials said the vice president’s schedule also provides more room for reactionary travel, giving her a chance to serve as a rapid response voice for the campaign and White House. They point to her quickly arranged trips last year to Tennessee around a gun control debate and Florida after the state Board of Education’s approved new standards for teaching Black history as examples.
“She no longer has to be bound by the contours of the pandemic, nor is she bound by being the tiebreaking vote in the US Senate, and so I think she is going to be free to travel and engage meaningfully in a way where early in the administration she was less able to,” Butler, a close Harris ally, added.
Reaching key audiences
In early January, Harris visited one of the most influential unions in Nevada – Culinary Workers Union Local 226, which is a majority Hispanic women union. It’s the type of audience that the vice president is uniquely suited to reach, allies say.
“When somebody like Kamala Harris, a strong woman, gets in front of our members, it matters,” Ted Pappageorge, secretary-treasurer for the union told CNN.
Joel Goldstein, a vice presidential scholar, noted that vice presidential candidates don’t often carry a lot of weight in a presidential campaign, particularly in a reelection bid. But they can speak to key parts of the base.
“I think that a vice president who has particular appeal to part of the party base can credentialize the president in speaking to that part of the base or can talk about the importance of the administration’s efforts or accomplishments that are of particular interest to parts of the base,” Goldstein said.
In some respects, it may be reminiscent of the Jimmy Carter-Walter Mondale ticket in 1980, when Carter – tied up with the Iran hostage crisis – relied on Mondale to frequently hit the campaign trail.
“Sometimes they bear a disproportionate load of the campaigning because the president adopts a Rose Garden strategy or because the president has a day job that people expect him or her to be doing,” Goldstein added, referring to the vice president.
Harris allies point to the vice president’s travel and events ahead of the midterm elections and the college campus tour last year as examples of the sway she can carry – hoping to recreate that again ahead of the 2024 presidential election.
