LARGO, Maryland — At their first public event since turning over the top of the 2024 Democratic ticket, President Joe Biden took on an unfamiliar role of ceding the spotlight to Vice President Kamala Harris.
Supporters turned out in droves to Prince George’s Community College just outside of Washington, D.C., for the event, which was a White House shindig ostensibly to announce the 10 drugs selected for Medicare’s new price negotiation process that effectively doubled as a Harris campaign rally.
The vice president is walking a thin line that sees her keeping Biden at arm’s length to avoid him tainting her rising popularity while still trying to take credit for the administration’s accomplishments, like the Medicare drug pricing provisions included in the Inflation Reduction Act.
The pair took the stage together in a show of solidarity, and it was initially unclear who would speak first. It ended up being Harris, who took the opportunity to speak from behind the presidential seal.
“We believe deeply that every senior in our nation should be able to live with security, stability, and dignity,” she said. “In the United States of America, no senior should have to choose between either filling their prescription or paying their rent.”
“My entire career, I have worked to hold bad actors accountable, and lower the cost of prescription drugs,” Harris added. The vice president said she was proud to cast the tiebreaking vote on the Inflation Reduction Act, which allowed the negotiations to take place.
Biden joked that he served in the Senate for 270 years and that he looks 40 before joking that “for the longest time I was too damn young because I was only about 29 when I got elected. Now I’m too damn old.”
The president then kept speaking, going over many of his familiar talking points for so long that attendees began growing restless and looking lovingly at the exits. The crowd was arguably most excited for an earlier speaker, Gov. Wes Moore (D-MD), who at 45 is drawing buzz for a White House run of his own, and even chanted “48” at him after he teed up Biden and Harris and presidents 46 and 47, respectively.
Thursday’s event further put a lens on the clear disparities between Democratic voters’ enthusiasm for the president and vice president.
Attendees began heading for the exits near the end of Biden’s speech, leading to a traffic jam out of the field house.
The president and vice president have held just a handful of events together this year, either officially or on the campaign trail, and Thursday’s rally featured a significantly more festive atmosphere than those past events.
Their most recent rally in the greater Washington, D.C., area came back in January. The abortion rights-focused event, held at a George Mason University satellite facility, made headlines due to the coordinated group of pro-Gaza protesters who repeatedly interrupted Biden’s remarks.
A similar event took place in Philadelphia in May, where attendees at the launch of a new Biden campaign black voter outreach program filled up roughly one-third of a high school gymnasium, according to reporters in the room.
Thursday’s rally, on the other hand, saw Novak Field House virtually filled to capacity two hours ahead of the program’s scheduled start, with a line of waiting attendees still wrapped around the adjoining building.
Meanwhile, attendees inside burst into supportive chants and did the wave while waiting on Biden and Harris.
Biden’s speech on Thursday attacked Republican lawmakers for voting as a party against the Inflation Reduction Act and specifically lauded Harris for casting the tiebreaking vote in the Senate. He pretended to forget Trump’s name, calling him “Donald Dump.”
The president said he first voted to let the government negotiate drug prices as a senator in 1973 but drew much more praise for his next line.
“I’ve got an incredible partner in the progress we’ve made,” Biden said of Harris. “She can make one hell of a president.”
Despite the healthcare focus of the event, supporters appeared more excited to show their support for the vice president than to celebrate an accomplishment of the current administration.
The Washington Examiner spoke with multiple people in attendance who were not aware of the event’s focus and had not heard about Biden’s latest win on drug pricing.
Since taking over the nomination from Biden in July, Harris has shot up both national and battleground polls.
Before exiting the race, Biden trailed former President Donald Trump by more than 3 percentage points in the RealClearPolitics polling average. Now Harris has erased that deficit and leads the former president by a point.
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Meanwhile, according to the nonpartisan Cook Political Report, Harris leads her opponent in Arizona, Michigan, North Carolina, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin. Trump still maintains a 3-point advantage in Nevada, and they are tied in Georgia.
You can watch the president and vice president’s remarks in full below.
