Former President Barack Obama is wading into the 2024 presidential contest less than a week after President Joe Biden ended his campaign and turned over the top of the ticket to his vice president, Kamala Harris.

The veep and first Black female to lead a major party ticket is seeing a “honeymoon” in the polls as she tightens the race against former President Donald Trump and coalesces major Democratic Party figures behind her candidacy. So far, no challenger has stepped forward, putting Harris on a glide path to a formal nomination at the party’s convention in Chicago next month. Obama, who for days left open the possibility that he would support a “blitz primary” that saw uncommitted delegates swayed by multiple candidates, appears to have closed that door.

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The 44th president on Friday signaled his support for Harris’s insurgent candidacy, releasing a joint statement with former First Lady Michelle Obama saying the former prosecutor would be a “fantastic” successor to Biden. “Earlier this week, Michelle and I called our friend @KamalaHarris. We told her we think she’ll make a fantastic President of the United States, and that she has our full support. At this critical moment for our country, we’re going to do everything we can to make sure she wins in November. We hope you’ll join us,” President Obama said on X. He accompanied the post with a behind-the-scenes video of Harris receiving a call from him announcing the news.

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National polls since Biden’s exit continue to show that Trump maintains a lead over Harris and even larger leads in some of the most hotly contested battleground states of the 2024 cycle. However, the switchover has disrupted Republicans’ line of attack which for months had been honed to harness the weakness of Biden’s economy and foreign policy chops as well as growing evidence of his physical and mental decline in office. Harris has scrambled that strategy, Politico reported, as Republicans test messages about Harris’s failures as a border czar, tough-on-crime prosecutor as the former attorney general of California, and her penchant for making “weird” or uninformed statements about coconut trees and “fancy” artificial intelligence.

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Support from the Obamas comes after other major Democrats have fallen in line behind the vice president. Former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA), who some say was the most vociferous in forcing President Biden out of the race, endorsed Harris on Wednesday and was quickly followed by House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-NY). In addition, she has notched nods from Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) and essentially all Democrats who have spoken out — with the exception of a few contrarians including Congressmen Dan Golden (D-NY) and “Squad” member Rashida Tlaib (D-MN). Sen. John Tester (D-MT), the most vulnerable incumbent of the 2024 cycle, has issued similarly vague statements about supporting Harris, who remains a deeply unpopular figure among the American electorate.

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