She’s just busy.
President Biden is trying to get on the campaign trail for Vice President Kamala Harris in the home stretch of the 2024 election, but keeps getting told by her campaign that she’ll get back to him, Axios reported on Sunday.
“He’s a reminder of the last four years, not the new way forward,” one individual familiar told the outlet.
At the moment, there aren’t any publicly scheduled events for both Harris, 60, and Biden, 81, to stump together prior to Election Day.
The sitting president has been on the campaign trail a few times, including on Oct. 15, when he delivered remarks to the Philadelphia Democratic City Committee Autumn Dinner, last Monday when he stumped in New Hampshire and Saturday when he campaigned in Pittsburgh.
Biden’s solo outing in Pittsburgh surprised some on Harris’ team, Axios reported.
The alleged slight against the president is significant considering Biden’s endorsement of Harris immediately after he announced he was dropping out of the race helped her quickly lock up the Democratic nomination with almost no fight.
“There is always speculation in political circles, but this is not accurate,” White House deputy press secretary Andrew Bates said in a statement about the report.
“We are in close touch with the campaign to determine when, where and how the president can be helpful.”
Additionally, some of Harris’ allies were riled by the president’s off-the-cuff remarks that “we gotta lock [Trump] up.”
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“Politically, lock him up — lock him out, that’s what we’ve got to do,” Biden quickly clarified, but the remark fed fodder to former President Donald Trump and other Republican critics.
Moreover, Biden has generally garnered less attention and fanfare compared to other prominent Democrats such as former President Barack Obama who was just in Georgia last Thursday and Michigan last Tuesday, among other recent stops.
Biden has also reportedly been mulling campaign work for Democrats facing Senate races in Delaware and Maryland.
Looming over Biden reportedly being kept at arm’s length are his dismal ratings with a 40.8% approval to 56.6% disapproval score, per the latest RealClearPolitics aggregate.
Harris has navigated questions about Biden carefully, publicly hailing his record and largely refraining from disparaging him, despite a flood of polling pegging him underwater with the public.
“To be very candid with you, even including Mike Pence, vice presidents are not critical of their presidents,” Harris previously told NBC News, referring to Trump’s veep and describing the approach as a “tradition.”
Earlier this month, she told ABC News told “The View” that there is “not a thing” she would’ve done differently than Biden other than naming a Republican to her cabinet.
During interviews, Harris has defended Biden on a number of fronts, including questions about his age and mental competency.
Republicans have seized upon that and worked to lump her in with Biden and the economic plights experienced under his administration in their ad campaigns against her.
At the same time, Harris has sought to impress upon voters that she won’t be a carbon copy of a Biden presidency.
“My presidency will not be a continuation of Joe Biden’s presidency,” Harris told Fox News’ Bret Baier during a combative interview.
The vice president appears to be balancing pressure from Democratic strategists to distance herself from Biden with fealty she feels to him, in part because he plucked from political mediocrity after her 2020 campaign crashed and burned.
Biden also did Harris a solid when he endorsed her after dropping out of the race on July 21, instead of backing an open process to succeed him as the party’s standard bearer.
Still, that has not forestalled strife between their staffers.
Privately some in Harris’ orbit have reportedly blamed Biden’s team for not doing more in terms of scheduling and other logistics to help boost her campaign.
There has been some speculation by Biden loyalists that if Harris wins on Nov. 5, she will clean house and push some of them out.
“Staff who haven’t given the vice president’s team the time of day for three years are suddenly very quick to loop them in emails and send them updates,” a White House official mused to Axios.
A spokesperson for Harris’ transition team downplayed accusations that her allies are planning to push out some of Biden’s loyal staffers.
“The transition is not doing any personnel selection pre-election, and any speculation to the contrary is fiction,” the spokesperson said. “Instead, we are focused on setting up the infrastructure necessary to be ready.”
The Post contacted the Harris-Walz campaign for comment.
