Barack Obama will head out on the campaign trail in Wisconsin with Tim Walz on Tuesday as they try to mobilize support for Kamala Harris' presidential bid.
Obama's appearance with the Minnesota governor follows fallout over a speech the former president made at his first rally for Harris on October 10.
Some swing state voters found his remarks "arrogant" and "disrespectful" when he appeared to imply that misogyny was stopping black men from supporting Harris, according to analysis from Impact Social.
This is Walz' sixth visit to the swing state of Wisconsin since becoming Harris' running mate and the governor recently campaigned in Green Bay alongside Governor Tony Evers and Grechen Whitmer. Walz will stay in Wisconsin after the rally with Obama and will speak at a campaign rally in Racine.
Obama will then head to Detroit, Michigan where he will rally swing state voters in a bid to encourage them to vote early for the Harris and Walz ticket.
The former president has been a continued and vocal supporter of Harris, having endorsed her shortly after President Joe Biden dropped out of the race, saying that she would make "an excellent President," and appearing at the DNC alongside former first lady Michelle Obama to support Harris.
But the last time Obama campaigned for Harris may have done more harm than good. On October 10, he headlined a rally for the Harris Walz ticket in the crucial swing state of Pennsylvania.
Ahead of the campaign event, Obama spoke to a group of Black Harris supporters, where he questioned the lack of support for her.
"We have not yet seen the same kinds of energy and turnout in all quarters of our neighborhoods and communities as we saw when I was running." Obama said that the issue, "seems to be more pronounced with the brothers," addressing Harris' struggle to get Black male voters on side and appearing to suggest that sexism may be behind this apprehension.
The former President's intention was to remedy gaps in Harris' support. But according to analysis conducted between October 10 and 14 by the social media monitoring firm Impact Social, the online reaction to his appearance was markedly negative, with many perceiving his remarks as disrespectful and patronizing to Black voters.
The 2024 election is one of the closest in modern history, with Harris and former President Donald Trump locked in a dead heat race to win the White House.
Yesterday, polling suggested Harris was narrowly maintaining her lead over Trump in the national polls, with polling aggregator FiveThirtyEight putting the vice president ahead by 1.8 point nationally.
However, Trump continues to gain ground on Harris, with the latest polling data today indicating that he could win the presidency after making gains in the critical swing state of Pennsylvania.
Newsweek has reached out to a representative for Obama via email for comment outside of normal working hours.
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