September 07, 2023 04:49 PM
Kamala Harris is going on tour again.
The vice president will embark this month on a 14-date college tour aimed at reaching young voters and talking up Democratic positions on abortion, gun control, LGBT rights, and climate change.
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“This generation is critical to the urgent issues that are at stake right now for our future,” Harris said in a statement announcing the tour. “It is young leaders throughout America who know what the solutions look like and are organizing in their communities to make them a reality. My message to students is clear: We are counting on you, we need you, you are everything.”
Dubbed the Fight for Our Freedoms College Tour, it will focus on issues such as “reproductive freedom and gun safety to climate action, voting rights, LGBT equality, and book bans,” according to a release from the White House.
Going on tour is becoming a habit for Harris, who just wrapped up a 17-state gig the Biden administration called the Summer of Action, and who made a series of abortion-related stops last fall. This one, like the others, will focus on young voters, black and Hispanic voters, and, via a community college stop, voters without a four-year degree.
In doing so, she’s filling a traditional role of vice presidents, said Democratic strategist Brad Bannon.
“It is traditionally the purview of the vice president to go after the party’s political base,” Bannon said. “The political base for Democrats is young voters, African Americans, Hispanics, young women. I think you’ll see the president using most of his time courting swing voters, while the vice president will go after the base. That’s traditionally the function vice presidents have served.”
Harris served that role last fall as she took the lead on the administration’s abortion messaging after the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade. She appeared in more than a dozen states for pro-abortion rights speeches and focus groups, and her party outperformed expectations in the midterm elections.
Democrats have already signaled they will go on offense again over the issue in 2024, and “reproductive freedom” is listed first on Harris’s list of topics for the college tour.
“The Dobbs decision really handicapped Republicans in 2022,” Bannon said. “It probably prevented them from winning big majorities in both chambers of Congress. But even though Republicans took their lumps on abortion in 2022, they’ve decided to go full-speed ahead.”
Harris will have something to prove even if she is going after traditional base voters for her party.
A recent Economist/YouGov poll found that just 36% of respondents approved of her, compared to 55% who disapproved. Among young voters aged 18 to 29, 36% approved and 46% disapproved, with the difference being that more young respondents said they had no opinion of her either way.
Some GOP presidential candidates have attempted to make Harris’s unpopularity a campaign issue. Nikki Haley, for example, talks a lot about how Harris is likely to become president if Joe Biden wins reelection next year, and in May called her one of the “most incompetent elected officials” in the nation.
Haley has also taken a more measured stance on abortion that she says will be more palatable to swing voters and more likely to get traction in Congress. Countering that stance and working to paint Republicans as having extreme views will likely be priorities for Harris in her stops.
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Her office has announced six stops so far at colleges in Virginia, North Carolina, Georgia, Wisconsin, Nevada, and Nevada, all of which are considered competitive states for next year.
The first three stops are at historically black colleges and universities, followed by a state flagship, a community college, and a traditional four-year university. More stops are expected to be announced later.