Members of former President Barack Obama’s team are looking to make connections between the energy of his 2008 campaign and Vice President Kamala Harris’s 2024 campaign.
The Democratic Party was inundated with a sudden boost of energy following the stepping aside of President Joe Biden as the party’s 2024 nominee, handing the baton to the younger Harris. Speaking at an Axios event, former Obama senior adviser Valerie Jarrett drew direct comparisons between the energy around 2008 and 2024.
“In a sense, it’s a continuation of the hard work he began,” Jarrett said of Harris’s campaign compared with Obama’s.
“We have nothing but joy and enthusiasm for what’s going on right now,” she continued. “Young people today who are picking up that baton and running with it is all President Obama would have ever wanted.”
She also said that Obama and his wife, Michelle, are enjoying their life post-presidency and are enjoying “seeing the next generation of leaders mature.”
Obama and Harris have a history together, with the vice president being one of the earliest and most vocal supporters of Obama. She helped host a fundraiser for Obama’s successful 2004 Illinois Senate run.
“They met, they clicked and they have over the years developed a very close friendship,” Jarrett told the New York Times.
Harris was already drawing comparisons with Obama in June 2008 after he won the Democratic nomination, emerging as a significant figure in his reelection campaign.
“There’s an Obama halo that, you know, he shined the light on her,” Brian Brokaw, who ran Harris’s campaign for attorney general, told the outlet. “The comparisons came naturally and fast.”
The two become close enough Obama ignited controversy when he commented on her looks.
“You have to be careful to, first of all, say she is brilliant and she is dedicated and she is tough, and she is exactly what you’d want in anybody who is administering the law, and making sure that everybody is getting a fair shake,” Obama said in 2013. “She also happens to be, by far, the best-looking attorney general in the country.”
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He quickly apologized after being accused of sexism.
Obama has thrown his weight behind Harris, seeking to inject the enthusiasm of his presidential run into hers. He is set to speak at the second night of the Democratic National Convention on Tuesday.
