WASHINGTON ― Casting himself as “a skinny kid with a funny name” instantly made a barely 40-something Barack Obama a star.
The future president won over the heart of swing voters on the Democratic convention stage in Boston two decades ago with a message that a country where slaves once sang freedom songs had a place for people like him too.
Obama of course made history four years later winning election as America’s first Black president with a new coalition that coated most of the Midwest – including Indiana, Iowa and Ohio, along with a few southern states – in blue paint.
Now, Obama and a vast network of loyalists are back on his home court of Chicago with a goal to make history once more by helping elect the first woman of color to the most powerful job on the planet.
“Bottom line is we are ready to get to work,” Obama told Kamala Harris in a July 23 phone call, two days after President Joe Biden’s stunning exit from the 2024 contest for the White House.
Earlier this year, Obama had expressed a fear, through surrogates, about Donald Trump’s potential return to power when the Republican was running against Biden. But Obama played it cool in public as a ready-and-willing bench player when Biden, his former vice president, needed him.
This hasn’t been a presidential campaign without a few side eyes at Obama, however, such as when actor George Clooney, a major Democratic party fundraiser who is friendly with the former president, publicly urged Biden out of the race.
Obama was also called out for a July 21 statement endorsing an open nominating process to pick a new nominee and some, such as journalist Roland S. Martin, chastised him for not immediately endorsing Harris’ bid.
Those in the former president’s political orbit emphasize how his relationship with Harris, which goes back two decades, never cooled.
Both have kept in regular touch during her time as vice president, which has “ramped up over the past month significantly,” a source close to the former president said in an interview.
Obama has offered to help on policy, strategic advice, fundraising and traveling to help get-out-the-vote, said the source, who is familiar with the Obama-Harris relationship.
“We’ve got no excuses. We’re gonna be underdogs, and you are gonna have to continue, as you said, to earn not just the nomination but earn the trust of folks all across this country,” Obama, joined by his wife, Michelle, told Harris, according to an extended transcript of the July call shared with USA TODAY.
“But knowing you as we do,” Obama added, “we’re absolutely confident that you’re gonna be able to make it happen.”
A unique name too: Dems enjoy ‘08 symmetry
As the country tries to keep pace with the drama of the 2024 presidential election, it is inevitable that voters, allies and foes will connect Obama to Harris’ quest to be the first woman of color in the White House.
She’s breaking fundraising records, energizing previously sluggish voters, attracting pop stars and drawing massive crowds in the summertime months when many people are on vacation. Both their fathers have PhDs in economics and have a sister named Maya.
She has a unique name, too.
“They are very similar in the way in how they do politics. It is very relational with an air of joy,” said Stefanie Brown James, a Democratic strategist who served as Obama’s national African American vote director in his successful 2012 reelection bid.
Democratic consultant Douglas Wilson, who worked as regional field director for Obama in South Carolina during the 2008 campaign, said the parallels cannot be ignored.
“They’re both trailblazers, and they both are rising to power at a time when the country was at a crossroads,” said Wilson, who also served as a senior advisor to the Biden-Harris campaign in North Carolina during the 2020 election.
It’s a symmetry the Harris campaign doesn’t mind leveraging given the now silver-haired 63-year-old’s statesman status as one of the three living former presidents from the Democratic Party.
Notably, Obama is receiving a primetime keynote speaking slot on the convention’s second night (Michelle is also slated to speak), making it one of most important speeches of the DNC’s week as veterans from his extensive alumni network flock to Harris’ team to work as campaign staffers.
From celebrity surrogates to grassroots organizers and state-level strategists, several Obama alumni said the presidential campaigns of 2008 and 2012 will be significant for Harris and her allies to learn from in the final weeks of the 2024 campaign.
But some warn that Harris must also be given the space to carve out her own introduction, especially as the incumbent VP’s honeymoon ebbs and as she unveils her own policies.
Much has changed over the past decade and a half, those allies point out, namely Trump’s taking over the Republican Party and defeating Hillary Clinton in 2016 with a populist campaign that turned a wide variety of previously blue states to red, from Michigan, Wisconsin and Pennsylvania to Ohio and Iowa.
Trump’s MAGA movement was significantly rooted in a sharp reaction against liberal elites and their political establishment, but also Obama’s multi-racial vision of the future.
“The campaign always understood that maybe some folks wouldn’t vote for Obama because he was young, Black and had a unique name,” actor Kal Penn, who worked on the 2008 campaign and later served in Obama’s White House and as national campaign co-chair during 2012, told USA TODAY.
The team’s strategy was premised upon expanding the electorate by caring much more about issues than appearance, he added, and the test for Harris will be how she can adopt and advance that groundwork
“The historic nature of her candidacy is something that can’t and shouldn’t be ignored. Certainly, there’s excitement around anytime that anybody is a first,” said Penn, the son of Indian immigrants. “But I think most voters really vote based on their kitchen table issues.”
‘A whole bunch of folks’: Obama’s A-listers assemble for Harris
Obama’s public role as advisor-in-chief hasn’t changed much since Harris took the party’s reins. He remains wedded to the belief that the 2024 campaign will be defined by a fractured media landscape and immovable Trump supporters, allies say.
But a noticeable shift this past month is how many A-list veterans from those campaigns have been drafted to the vice president’s team, including Penn, who has signed up to be a Harris surrogate.
At the senior campaign consultant level are David Plouffe, who ran the Obama 2008 operation; Mitch Stewart, who orchestrated the 2008 Iowa caucus win; Stephanie Cutter, deputy campaign manager for Obama’s 2012 reelection and Jen Palmieri, a former Obama White House communications director.
Harris campaign officials involved with the additions say along with retaining the Biden campaign leadership – which contained many Obama alumni – these hirings reflect the all-hands-on-deck approach by a unified party in the final stretch of the race.
In the extended July conversation with Harris, the former president conveyed how she must send a message “to not just Democrats, but every American” including GOP voters and especially younger voters.
“(T)he stakes are high, and your vision for a generous, inclusive, positive, community- minded, responsible, lawful America,” Obama told Harris.
“That’s exactly what we need. So, I know you’re gonna be working hard, but you’re gonna have a whole bunch of folks working alongside you.”
‘This is not 2008’ Obama alum warn against sequel
Other Obama veterans are warning against Democrats getting lost in the nostalgia of the moment.
They must embrace Harris’ differences and, therefore, her strengths.
“Their style of communication to me is Midwest versus West Coast,” said Michael Ceraso, a Democratic strategist who served as a New Mexico field organizer for Obama in 2008 and as deputy field director in New Hampshire during the 2012 reelection.
Obama, he said, was swept up by the unpopularity of the George W. Bush administration and anti-Iraq war movement, arriving at a time when many felt there wasn’t enough intelligence in the Oval Office.
Similarly, Harris is riding a wave liberals hope will be defined by threats to democracy and character questions around Trump, whose unprecedented legal troubles include 34 state felony convictions involving hush money payments to a former porn star with whom he allegedly had an extramarital affair.
“Her prosecutorial style, I don’t think, would fit in 2008 or even in 2019,” Ceraso said. “But it fits now in contrast with Trump. It is clear, succinct, yet hip. That’s why the enthusiasm is there.”
Those who worked in the early days of Obama’s rise also point out the entirely different origins for how each got to their historic Democratic presidential nominations.
Obama began as an underdog in a crowded primary field of well-established Democratic figures, including Biden who had run previously in 1988. He spent two years running for the nomination in an insurgent-styled campaign that turned at its end into a two-person race against Hillary Clinton, a former first lady and fellow Senate Democratic colleague.
Harris, by contrast, first ran for president in 2020 but didn’t even make it to the Iowa caucuses. She dropped out in December of 2019 and eight months later Biden followed through with his campaign promise to pick a woman as his vice-presidential running mate.
“That organizing effort hasn’t let up since then,” said James, who is also co-founder of Collective PAC, which is aimed at increasing Black political participation.
“So I absolutely believe in this moment, Black women are the engines, we are the flag bearers, the prototypes.”
For instance, whereas many older Black civil rights leaders and elected officials doubted Obama’s chances at winning and sided with Clinton in 2008, many women of color, whether voters, activists or officeholders, were explicit during the intra-party fight this year that Harris should be the Democratic successor.
“This is not 2008… Barack was new on the national scene, Kamala has been on the national scene for nearly a decade,” said Anton Gunn, who was Obama’s political director in South Carolina during the 2008 campaign.
He added that Harris also comes into the 2024 race with built-in executive experience that Obama didn’t have because she’s been able to build a network over the last four years as vice president that helped when it came time earlier this summer to quickly pounce on the open nomination.
Harris has something else going for her, too: street cred with the Obama crew.
Looking back on Obama’s 2008 run, Democratic consultant Brent Messenger pointed out how risky it was for people in his party to challenge the seemingly invincible Clinton juggernaut.
A San Francisco native, Messenger recalled it was Harris who introduced him to Obama during the 2008 campaign while she was working as the city’s district attorney. Harris, he noted, was considered by original Obama campaign staffers to be one of them.
“When Hillary Clinton was obviously the front runner, it was kind of a dangerous thing for her to do,” said Messenger, who was Obama’s field director in New Mexico during the 2008 White House race. “She stuck her neck out for Obama very early on.”
“It was rag-tag and true believers,” he added. “Some people saw it, and some people didn’t.”
‘Déjà vu feeling’: Youth vote, crowd sizes and the social media campaign
Others who worked in Obama’s previous campaigns say Democrats should lean into and expound on their similarities.
Both Harris and Obama are keenly aware of how important it is when running for president to give younger constituencies a voice. That’s something that is reflected largely in Harris’ recent social media strategy.
In early July, for instance, as Biden’s candidacy was faltering, the vice president saw a sudden surge in social media posts with the hashtag #KHive, a group of online supporters who have created a deluge of pro-Harris content. It’s only gotten louder as she’s taken on the mantle of presidential nominee.
“What they’re doing is trying to stay relevant in the zeitgeist while continuing to feed the base with energy,” Scott Goodstein, a Democratic tech consultant, told USA TODAY. “It’s really magical.”
Goodstein led Obama’s social networking strategy in 2008. At the time, with Twitter, Facebook and the iPhone all in their infancy, online interactions between candidates and their potential supporters were still largely unchartered territories.
The internet and technology landscapes have evolved since then. Even so, it’s obvious how Harris’ team has borrowed from the Obama digital playbook with quick-witted responses to controversies and misinformation, he said.
“This is a worldwide problem today, and the Harris campaign has taken this to a new level where they’re taking clips of Trump in his own language and pushing that out to their base of what he is saying, and correcting it,” Goodstein said.
Terry Szuplat, a former Obama speechwriter and the author of “Say It Well,” a forthcoming book on public speaking, said it’s been remarkable to watch how the Harris campaign has knocked the Republican nominee off his game.
“Harris is staying focused on what matters to Americans in their daily lives—bringing down costs, protecting their fundamental freedoms, making education more affordable, protecting their retirement,” he said.
“Donald Trump seems obsessed with the size of her crowds and is frustrated that there’s a surge in enthusiasm for her campaign,” Szuplat added.
The Republican nominee, who likes emphasizing Obama’s middle name “Hussein” and role on the trail, exemplified that last week speaking at a press conference at his private golf club in Bedminster, New Jersey.
Asked if he should focus more on inflation, border security and other policies, Trump told reporters: “I think I’m entitled to personal attacks. I don’t have a lot of respect for (Harris).”
Several Obama surrogates, such as former White House communicators director Dan Pfeiffer, responded by mocking Trump for holding a campaign event on the cost of living at a private golf course.
David Axelrod, a chief strategist for both of Obama’s campaigns, said Trump, “seems like a rattled old boxer,” being pummeled by Harris, “a younger, agile fighter, and flailing wildly.”
On the campaign trail, Democratic rally goers say the connections between Obama and Harris are evident too. Suba Srini, an IT professional turned activist from Chantilly, Virginia, was among the 14,000 people who packed Temple University’s Liacouras Center in Philadelphia earlier this month when Harris introduced Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz as her running mate.
The event immediately evoked memories for her of Obama’s first bid for the White House. “I certainly had the déjà vu feeling,” she said.
