- Obama hasn’t made an official campaign appearance since the Democratic National Convention.
- Despite being one of the nation’s most popular Democrats, Obama has a distaste for partisan politics.
- She’s instead focused on a nonpartisan voter registration organization she launched in 2018.
As Vice President Kamala Harris is virtually tied with former President Donald Trump, one of the country’s most popular Democrats has been notably absent from the campaign. Former First Lady Michelle Obama hasn’t made an official appearance on Harris’ campaign since speaking at the Democratic National Convention nearly two months ago.
Obama publicly rejects partisan politics and has remained relatively quiet throughout the 2024 campaign, instead focusing much of her energy on When We All Vote, a nonpartisan voter registration organization she launched in 2018. Rather than showing face publicly, she’s been working to raise turnout in battleground states.
Many still seem to wish that she’d run for office though, and even floated her name as a possible replacement for President Joe Biden when he dropped his reelection bid. Yet Obama has insisted she’s not a politician for more than a decade — at a White House event in 2012, she said she would “absolutely not” run for office.
Though other Democratic superstars — including former presidents Barack Obama and Bill Clinton — have hit the trail for Harris, five sources told NBC News that the former first lady is waiting to do so until closer to Election Day. Two of the sources said that she is concerned about security after the assassination attempts against former President Donald Trump.
According to three of the sources, Obama will be involved in Democrats’ “closing arguments” and begin campaigning publicly only when she’ll have the biggest impact. The Harris campaign did not immediately respond to Business Insider’s request for comment and Obama’s spokesperson instead offered information about an upcoming When We All Vote rally in Atlanta, GA.
Obama will headline the nonpartisan event on Oct. 29, which is aimed at mobilizing first-time voters. Beth Lynk, Executive Director of When We All Vote, said that the group specifically targets young, Black, Latino, and other marginalized voters.
“Young people are not identifying with a specific political party, but they are very leaned in and engaged on these issues,” Lynk told Business Insider. She declined to specify which celebrity co-chairs will attend the event — the organization boasts Steph Curry, Selena Gomez, Jennifer Lopez, and Tom Hanks, among others — but said there will be “a really, really good lineup of folks.”
