Bill Clinton will go to the battleground states for Harris

CNN
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Former President Bill Clinton will hit the road this weekend to launch a highly targeted push through battleground states leading up to Election Day, three sources familiar with his plans told CNN.

The former president will seek to appeal to rural voters where polls have shown Vice President Kamala Harris performing worse than some recent Democratic candidates, particularly among younger black men. Former President Barack Obama is also making the trip, starting in Pittsburgh on Thursday evening.

Clinton will begin with stops in Georgia on Sunday and Monday. A bus tour of North Carolina is expected to follow next week until the hurricanes recover.

The focus is on districts won by former President Donald Trump. But it’s also up to Clinton voters, who hope there are enough left from when he was the last Democratic presidential candidate before Biden won Georgia in 1992, and that he can rejoin them in a coalition from which they have repeatedly dropped out over the last decade.

Clinton will not appear at rallies. Returning to a type of campaigning he hasn’t done since he was named the “Comeback Kid” in the 1992 New Hampshire primary, Clinton’s schedule includes local fairs and porch rallies where he speaks to, at most, a few hundred people at a time .

He will talk about the economy and is convinced that the election will come down to this issue for undecided voters. He will revisit themes from his speech at the Democratic National Convention this summer about Trump only being out for Trump and how he himself has been out of office for more than 20 years and is still younger than the Republican Candidate. He’ll eat fried foods (maybe even briefly abandon the vegan diet he’s been known to follow since heart surgery).

“He is the perfect messenger to make the case that Kamala Harris would get inflation under control and get the economy back on track,” a person who has spoken to the former president about his plans told CNN on Thursday. “So he saddles up, goes back to his roots and meets people where he wants them to ask for their help choosing.”

Clinton is aware, people who have spoken with him say, that along the way he may be followed by Trump supporters who bring up his wife, former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, and his past scandals. He is prepared and argues that voters need to focus on what matters in these final weeks.

Clinton was one of the first five calls Harris made in July after President Joe Biden dropped out of the race, a person with knowledge of the conversation told CNN. She asked for his support, and he immediately offered it. Since then, her staff has been working on finalizing the campaign details.

“He is an authority on economics and bread-and-butter issues and the longest peacetime economic recovery in American history,” said Calvin Smyre, a former Georgia state representative who spoke to CNN about his fond memories as he watched Clinton’s 1992 campaign in that state. “ He has a knack for reaching people.”

The decline in rural voters has always been a major problem for Democrats, even as the urban population has grown and become increasingly blue. The Harris campaign saw a gradual decline in Democratic support in rural counties between Clinton’s last election in 1996 and Biden’s victory four years ago.

In a moment that has haunted some Hillary Clinton aides, the former president once asked in an internal strategy meeting what they would do to appeal to rural voters, but was quickly shot down, with an aide saying that those voters were for the Democrats had decided.

But the Harris campaign’s rural strategy goes beyond Bill Clinton’s. The vice president and her running mate, Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz, have both appeared in rural areas in Georgia and Pennsylvania. More visits to rural battlefields are planned for both in recent weeks, coupled with work at campaign offices opened in rural counties.

Last week, the campaign launched a series of ads aimed at rural voters, airing specifically on RFD-TV, Fox News Channel, INSP, History, The Cowboy Channel, The CowGirl Channel and Destination America.

James Carville, the former Clinton adviser who has long pushed for his old boss’s return, said he was glad the time had finally come.

“He’s the best explainer there is,” Carville told CNN, emphasizing that Clinton has the credibility to make the case if the election is negotiated according to his famous slogan, “It’s the economy, stupid.”

Asked if he would have liked to have seen Clinton sooner, Carville joked: “The best time to plant an oak tree was 25 years ago. The second best time is now.”

At a campaign stop outside Pittsburgh on Thursday morning, Pennsylvania Rep. Chris Deluzio said he was eager to see Clinton’s campaign in his state. “We have a record of presidents who created jobs, grew the economy and kicked the crap out of the economic balance sheet when Republicans were in the White House.”

Asked whether voters remember Clinton, Deluzio – who said he recently turned 40 – replied: “Some people remember,” adding: “A lot of voters younger than me don’t remember the 90s or weren’t even alive.”

Jason Carter, a former Georgia state senator, said he believes Clinton will be a big help in south Georgia and beyond.

“People think of Bill Clinton’s time as president as a time when this country was doing well, when people were making money and when people weren’t left behind,” Carter said.

But the significance, Carter said, isn’t just in nostalgia.

“It shows people even in Atlanta that this is a type of campaign that doesn’t try to differentiate between rural and urban,” Carter said, arguing that Clinton can help tell the story of working- and middle-class roots tell the Harris and Walz themselves I was stressed on the way.

Carter confirmed that one Georgia voter is already fully on board: his grandfather, former President Jimmy Carter, who turned 100 last week and said he was waiting to vote for Harris out of hospice care.

“We’re all waiting for the ballot to come out,” the younger Carter said.

This story has been updated with additional information.