Celebrities lend Harris star power as political honeymoon fades – Washington Examiner
Vice President Kamala Harris is leveraging celebrity endorsements to rekindle enthusiasm for her presidential campaign as she faces declining momentum. She is set to host a livestream event with Oprah Winfrey aimed at motivating voters for the upcoming election. This follows endorsements from notable figures like Taylor Swift and Billie Eilish, who support Harris for her stance on reproductive rights, environmental protection, and democracy. Despite initial excitement, Harris’s campaign now grapples with internal party conflicts and concerns about voter engagement, particularly following the Teamsters union’s decision to withhold its endorsement in favor of Donald Trump.
Harris has a lead in national polls and some swing states, and her campaign aides emphasize her recent debate performance as a key to maintaining momentum. However, the Trump campaign counters that Harris’s popularity is waning and that the public is recognizing her as a “dangerous liberal.” Democratic strategists assert that while maintaining campaign momentum is challenging, Harris has executed her strategy effectively without major gaffes. Events such as the one with Winfrey are seen as key opportunities for her to reach and engage voters directly, particularly in a digital landscape where many voters consume media online.
Celebrities lend Harris star power as political honeymoon fades
Vice President Kamala Harris is turning to A-list celebrities as she seeks to recapture the sense of Democratic enthusiasm that marked her early campaign for president.
Oprah Winfrey, who endorsed Harris during the Chicago convention, will join her on Thursday for a live-streamed event in the battleground of Michigan as early voting gets underway in a handful of states.
“What is essential to me is getting people motivated to vote – and that’s my intention in hosting this event,” Winfrey said in a statement. “My goal is to get people excited about the privilege and power of the vote.”
Her event comes one week after pop icon Taylor Swift got under Trump’s skin with her own endorsement of Harris, and one day after singer Billie Eilish endorsed her, too.
“We are voting for Kamala Harris and Tim Walz, because they are fighting to protect our reproductive freedom, our planet, and our democracy,” Eilish said in a video statement with her brother, Finneas O’Connell.
Celebrity culture has surrounded Harris’s campaign from the very beginning. Singer-songwriter Charli XCX set off an internet sensation when she called Harris “brat,” the slang title of her new album, on the day she announced her run for president.
A month later, Democrats leaned into the Hollywood support at a Chicago convention attended by stars ranging from Pink to John Legend.
Harris was riding a moment of collective relief among Democrats, who feared President Joe Biden would cost them the election after his disastrous debate performance in June. Biden stepped aside a few weeks later so she could take his place.
Yet the endorsements have grown in importance as the luster of Harris’s candidacy has begun to fade.
Her campaign is now beset by the same intraparty fight over Gaza that plagued Biden, while Harris has given Democrats fresh reasons to worry. On Wednesday, the Teamsters union withheld its endorsement, releasing a poll that found rank-and-file members support former President Donald Trump by an almost 2-to-1 margin.
Harris has fundamentally reset the race. She’s outpolling Trump nationally, with narrow leads in a number of swing states. But Democrats are simultaneously guarding against a drop in excitement and are hoping celebrity endorsements can keep voters engaged.
Aides for Harris, who frequently cite her Philadelphia debate against Trump last week, dismiss the idea that Harris needs to rely on the star power of celebrities and instead underscore their importance to voters as trusted messengers.
“[This week’s] stops will be the latest opportunity for the vice president to continue harnessing the momentum following her commanding debate win — and take her message of turning the page on Donald Trump to chart a new way forward directly to voters in battleground states,” Harris campaign spokeswoman Lauren Hitt wrote in a memo. “The events, such as the primetime livestream event with Oprah, also are high visibility opportunities to draw eyeballs even beyond the states where they’re occurring.”
Still, the Trump campaign has already declared Harris’s political honeymoon over, arguing the public is “waking up to the fact that she is a dangerous, liberal, and failed vice president.”
“President Trump received a bump in the post-debate polls and has the momentum in this race,” Trump campaign spokeswoman Karoline Leavitt told the Washington Examiner.
Momentum is almost impossible to maintain over the course of an entire campaign, according to Democratic strategist Garry South, though, for South, Harris continues to have an advantage. She has maintained, and in some cases built on, her lead in post-debate polling.
“I was highly critical of her failed campaign for president in 2019-20, but I give her full credit in this one,” South told the Washington Examiner. “She hasn’t made any major mistake, her roll-out and execution have been flawless.”
Republicans have criticized Harris for largely avoiding the national media since she announced her campaign, while she waited weeks before beginning to detail her policy agenda.
But Harris has slowly begun to do both. On Tuesday, she held one of her first major sit-down interviews with national reporters when she met with the National Association of Black Journalists.
“Harris has also benefited from this being an unusually short race, and Trump has been hurt by overexposure for more than nine years,” South said.
Another Democratic strategist, Christopher Hahn, a former staffer for Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) and host of the Aggressive Progressive podcast, said that every campaign tries to generate momentum and Harris’s is “no different.”
Colin Seeberger, a senior communications adviser at the Center for American Progress, called the Harris-Winfrey event a “smart strategy” because it provides a platform for the vice president to communicate “directly to voters.”
“According to a recent NBC poll, 40% of the electorate describe themselves as primarily digital media consumers,” Seeberger told the Washington Examiner. “By leveraging the social media accounts of both Winfrey and the Harris campaign, the vice president’s conversation will be able to reach millions of Americans who otherwise may be disinclined to follow traditional media coverage.”
“The polling also shows these are exactly the voters both campaigns need to be focused on persuading,” he said.
But the events also give Republicans an opening to accuse Harris of cozying up with the elite.
The event with Winfrey follows actor Matt Damon and Broadway star Lin-Manuel Miranda hosting a fundraiser for the vice president in New York on Wednesday night. Tickets for the dinner cost $25,000 per person, according to Bloomberg.
Other celebrities, from actors Robert De Niro, Molly Ringwald, Tyler Ferguson, Tony Goldwyn, and Leslie Odom Jr. to singers Debbie Harry of Blondie and Michael Stipe of R.E.M., have hosted events for Harris this month alone, according to the New York Times.
Harris also spoke during a campaign call with young people on Wednesday, alongside actress Chloe Grace Moretz and Democratic Tennessee state Rep. Justin Pearson.
“Your generation is killing it,” Harris said. “You guys, you’re brilliant, you care, you are impatient in every incredible, good way. You’re not waiting for someone else to step up and lead. You are saying you’re going to step up and get it done. And I mean isn’t that the spirit of our country that makes us strong?”
The Harris-Winfrey event starts at 8 p.m. EDT.
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