CLARKSTON, Georgia: Bruce Springsteen and Barack Obama lent their star power to Kamala Harris’ quest for the presidency on Thursday as the vice president enlists some of her most high-profile surrogates in the closing days of the campaign.
The use of Springsteen, an iconic performer whose career spans five decades, and Obama, still one of the biggest names in Democratic politics, highlights how Harris’ campaign is in an all-out sprint ahead of Election Day, leaning on some of the most noteworthy names in the party to both help her deliver her closing message and lambast her opponent, former President Donald Trump.
“I get why people are looking to shake things up, but what I cannot understand is why anybody would think that Donald Trump would shake things up in ways that are good for you,” Obama told the audience outside Atlanta.
Obama wasted no time attacking Trump, knocking him for “trying to sell you stuff,” as someone who only cares about “his ego, his money, his status,” and gives lengthy speeches that are “just word salad.”
“We do not need four years of a wannabe king, a wannabe dictator,” Obama said before touting Harris as someone “ready for the job.”
After arguing Trump is focused on himself, Obama said, “If you elect Kamala Harris ... she will be focused on you.”
Springsteen, too, focused on Trump.
After a performance of “The Promised Land,” a ballad off his 1978 album “Darkness on the Edge of Town,” Springsteen told the Georgia audience he was backing Harris because he wants “a president who reveres the constitution.”
“There is only one candidate in this election who holds those principles dear, Kamala Harris. She’s running to be the 47th president of the United States. Donald Trump is running to be an American tyrant,” Springsteen added before playing “Land of Hope and Dreams” and “Dancing in the Dark.”
Harris’ rally in Clarkston — an eastern Atlanta suburb — was at a high school football stadium where the audience reflected the suburb’s reputation as the “most diverse square mile in America.” The community has taken in waves of immigrants and refugees, and 40 percent of its population was foreign-born in 2020.
The DJ working the crowd before the event started called out not only to graduates of historically Black colleges and universities, but to West Indians. Among those in the snaking line to enter were people of Asian descent and women in hijabs.
Many attendees said they were trying to push their relatives and neighbors to the polls to vote for Harris, either through formal volunteer efforts or on their own. “I decided to go volunteer because I couldn’t keep my mouth shut,” said Beverly Payne, who lives in Cumming, a Republican suburban stronghold north of Atlanta.
Payne said she is still working on persuading her mother but has already swung one Georgia vote to Harris. “My 85-year-old father has gone Democratic for the first time in his life,” she said.
Actor Samuel L. Jackson, director Spike Lee and actor and filmmaker Tyler Perry also spoke at the start of the event.
“No matter what kind of shenanigans, skullduggery and subterfuge, the okie-doke, we’re not going back,” Lee proclaimed.
Harris’ run of events with celebrities will continue Friday when she travels to Texas for a Houston rally with Beyonce, according to three people familiar with the matter. The singer is a Houston native, and her 2016 song “Freedom” has become Harris’ campaign anthem.
While the Friday rally is in a red state that even the most optimistic Democrat knows the vice president is unlikely to turn blue in November, the event Thursday in Georgia highlights that state’s prominent place in her possible path to defeating former President Donald Trump.
Democrats, led by then-former Vice President Joe Biden and Harris, won Georgia in 2020, becoming the first Democratic presidential campaign to win the Southern state since Bill Clinton in 1992. Harris’ campaign is hopeful she can keep the state blue in 2024.
Polls of likely voters in Georgia from NYT/Siena to Fox News to the Atlanta Journal-Constitution show a tight race between Trump and Harris.
Thursday’s event is the first in the campaign’s “When We Vote We Win” concert series that aims to encourage Harris supporters to vote before Election Day.
Harris is not the only member of the Democratic campaign to lean on star power in the final days. Gov. Tim Walz, her running mate, has events in North Carolina on Thursday alongside singer-songwriter James Taylor.
Democrats are known for leaning on high-profile surrogates in the final days of presidential races.
Springsteen has long been a supporter of Democratic presidential campaigns. The artist backed Obama in 2008 and 2012, even endorsing the would-be president in the contentious 2008 Democratic primary. He backed former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton in 2016, performing at a Philadelphia rally on the eve of Election Day, and endorsed Biden in 2020. The New Jersey artist endorsed Harris earlier this month, calling Trump the “most dangerous candidate for president in my lifetime.”
Beyonce, too, backed Clinton in 2016, performing at an event in Cleveland alongside husband and rapper Jay Z just days before Election Day that year. And Taylor has become a staple at Democratic events and fundraisers.
But Clinton’s loss to Trump in 2016, despite the considerable star power behind her, serves as a warning for Democrats that energy provided by big-name artists like Springsteen and Beyonce is often not enough to win an election.
Harris campaign advisers, though, see events like those in Georgia and Texas as major moments to mobilize voter enthusiasm and get out the vote before Election Day.
According to the Associated Press count, 2,025,645 people in Georgia have already voted early in-person, while an additional 134,336 mail-in ballots have been submitted in the 2024 general election.
