WASHINGTON — With less than two weeks to go before a historic election, Vice President Kamala Harris has yet to ask for campaign help from the only other woman approaching the Oval Office: former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.
The decision underscores Harris’ lack of interest in the history-making potential of her candidacy with voters, a stark contrast to Clinton’s approach in the 2016 campaign. It also reflects the Harris campaign’s strategy to focus on connecting with specific voters. especially men.
A person close to the campaign said that having Clinton on the campaign trail at this time may not be the most helpful move because she needs to focus on her core messages.
Clinton is expected to hold at least one event for the Harris campaign in the final week of the election, though the event has not been announced, according to two people familiar with the plan. It is not clear whether Clinton will appear on the campaign trail alongside the vice president.
A Harris campaign official said Clinton will campaign for the vice president in the final stages of the race.
After endorsing Harris’ candidacy in July, Clinton held several fundraisers for her. His most high-profile appearance on Harris’ behalf was an appearance at the Democratic National Convention in August.
Clinton has tried to drum up support for Harris during media appearances and through some social media posts a video “Kamala is the most suitable person for this era in our country,” he said on Wednesday.
“Many of us have put great cracks in this glass ceiling,” Clinton said. “There was a purpose behind it, and that purpose was the freedom to be yourself and the freedom to go as hard as your work and talent will take you.”
In an interview with NBC News on Tuesday, Harris didn’t talk about the glass ceiling on the campaign trail.Well, I’m obviously a woman. I don’t need to show it to anyone.”
“You don’t always have to talk about history to do that. Voters are tired, worried, and want to know what the next president will do for them,” said a Democratic strategist on condition of anonymity. “The campaign’s instinct to keep its identity politics within reach is perfectly reasonable, and powerful surrogates like Secretary Clinton are out there raising tens of millions of dollars to make sure the vice president’s message gets through to voters.”
A second campaign official said Harris aides were wary of reminding voters of Clinton’s 2016 loss to Donald Trump, as the vice president casts himself as a candidate for change who offers a new generation of politics.
Clinton is on a weeklong book tour to promote her new memoir, Something Lost, Something Gained, in which she criticizes Trump. The former Democratic nominee’s events filled theaters in battleground states like Pennsylvania and North Carolina. Next week, his book tour will take him to Michigan and Georgia.
In these events, Clinton’s message is a warning to voters about Trump’s return to the White House, though those who paid to be in the room need no convincing.
“If he has a Republican Congress, if he’s in the White House, they’re going to pass a national abortion ban and he’s going to sign it,” Clinton said of Trump during a book tour in Washington.
“The people who actually worked in the first Trump White House and the first Trump administration were people with some experience,” Clinton said. “Now they’re all gone. They all, you know, support Kamala Harris because they’ve seen what Trump is like.”
A longtime Harris aide, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to speak candidly, said Hillary Clinton — who, like her husband, former President Bill Clinton, is following the vice president — appears to be an asset to the campaign. But, as with Hillary Clinton, the campaign’s reliance on her as a potential first woman president is not a successful electoral strategy to defeat Trump.
“Hillary Clinton said, ‘I’m with her,’ and they weren’t,” a Harris aide said of the voters. “That means we have to focus on the voter rather than the candidate because the country is not ready for that messaging. “I’m with Him” means you’re talking about the candidate rather than the voter. Now we pay more attention to the freedom of the voter than the candidate.”