The campaign to reelect Joe Biden and Kamala Harris to America's top two elected positions will ramp up this month, as the president again casts the 2024 election as a "battle for the soul of America."
President Joe Biden on Friday will deliver remarks in Valley Forge, Pennsylvania, where he will pose the question to the American people if democracy is a "sacred cause" worth defending, according to excerpts from the speech from his reelection campaign.
"Today we are here to answer the most important of questions: Is democracy still America’s sacred cause?" the president is set to ask. "This isn’t rhetorical, academic, or hypothetical. Whether democracy is still America’s sacred cause is the most urgent question of our time. It is what the 2024 election is all about.”
Both Biden and Harris will be hitting the road this month, delivering specific messages for specific audiences, with the hopes of earning four more years in the White House from voters. While Harris will return to meeting with the campaign's "core coalitions" to discuss civil liberties, Biden will speak about democracy in America.
"The threat Donald Trump posed in 2020 to American democracy has only grown more dire in the years since," Biden campaign manager Julie Chavez Rodriguez told reporters Tuesday. "Our message is clear and simple: We are running a campaign like the fate of our democracy depends on it - because it does."
Biden's first stop will take place Friday near Valley Forge, Pennsylvania, where the Continental Army trained and reorganized under General George Washington during the American Revolution. The speech was initially scheduled for Saturday but the campaign moved it due to inclement weather in the area that day.
"The same spot where nearly 250 years ago, our nation's forefathers transformed a disorganized alliance of continental militias to a cohesive coalition united in their fight for our democracy," principal deputy campaign manager Quentin Fulks said. Washington, he noted, would go on to become America's first president and would establish a fundamental precedent: relinquishing power to a successor decided by an election.
Biden, the campaign said, believes the idea that democracy is on the line is a core motivation of the campaign. "It's what he wakes up every day thinking about," Fulks said.
Political discord and violence - and specifically the Jan. 6, 2021, riot, when far-right supporters of then-President Donald Trump attacked the Capitol to disrupt the Congressional certification of the 2020 election - is at the heart of the Biden's pitch to voters. That Biden will be making this pitch at Valley Forge ahead of Jan. 6, 2024, is no coincidence.
“When the attacks of January 6th happened, there was no doubt about the truth," Biden is set to say. "At the time, even Republican members of Congress and Fox News commentators publicly and privately condemned the attack. And as one Republican Senator said, Trump’s behavior was embarrassing and humiliating for the country."
“But now as time has gone on — politics, fear, money – have all intervened. And those MAGA voices who know the truth about Trump and January 6th have abandoned the truth and abandoned our democracy," the president will say. "They’ve made their choice. Now the rest of us – Democrats, Independents, mainstream Republicans – we have to make our choice.
"I know mine," he'll add. "And I believe I know America’s.”
He'll also lay the blame for the riot squarely at the feet of his once and future opponent, making the case that "in America, our leaders don’t hold on to power relentlessly" while extolling the virtues of the country's first president when he set the longstanding precedent of a peaceful transfer of power.
"George Washington was at the height of his power having just defeated the most powerful empire on Earth. He could have held onto that power as long as he wanted," the president is set to say. "But that wasn’t the America he and the American troops of Valley Forge had fought for."
"Our leaders return power to the people – willingly," he'll say. "You do your duty. You serve your country. And ours is a country worthy of service. We are not perfect, but at our best, we face head on the good, the bad, the truth of who we are. That’s what great nations do, and we are a great nation – the greatest of nations."
“That’s the America I see in our future.
“We get up. We carry on. We speak of possibilities – not carnage. We’re not weighed down by grievance. We don’t foster fear. We don’t walk around as victims. We take charge of our destiny.
“We get the job done – to help people find their place in a changing world and dream and build the future we all deserve.
“We don’t believe America is failing. We know America is winning. That’s American patriotism.”
Biden will then deliver a similar message at Mother Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church in Charleston, South Carolina, on Monday. Mother Emanuel, the oldest Black church in the southern U.S., was infamously the site of a mass shooting carried out by a white supremacist in 2015. Nine people were killed, and a 10th was wounded, during a Bible study session on June 17, 2015.
America, the Biden campaign said, is "worried about the rise of political violence and determined to stand against it."
South Carolina is also, in a sense, Biden Country - the Democratic Party moved to make South Carolina the site of the first Democratic presidential primary this election cycle. The New Hampshire primary date is still first, owing to a state law requiring it be the first in the nation.
South Carolina gave Biden his first win in a presidential primary, propelling him into Super Tuesday, when he won 10 states and hundreds of delegates toward his nomination and eventual presidential win.
South Carolina is also home to a voter bloc that Biden seeks to win over - or win back - as he pursues Black and young voters. A USA TODAY/Suffolk University poll released released Tuesday suggests that Black voters are slightly favoring Trump, while other polls suggest that support for Biden is softening among minority voters.
While Biden goes to Pennsylvania, Harris will head to Columbia, South Carolina, visiting the Seventh District AME Church, where she'll deliver a keynote address to the Women's Missionary Society's annual retreat. There, she'll address the "full-on attack on freedom - freedoms occurring in states across the nation, and call on AME leaders to continue to stand in defense of our country's most sacred principles," Fulks said.
Later this month, Harris will begin her "Reproductive Freedoms Tour" in Wisconsin, on Jan. 22, 51 years since the Roe v. Wade decision legalized abortion - and which was overturned by a Trump-packed conservative Supreme Court in 2022.
Harris' tour will "highlight the chaos and cruelty created by Trump all across the country when it comes to women's health care," Fulks said. "And you can expect the entirety of our campaign to be out in full force later this month on the anniversary of Roe V. Wade, making crystal clear to every American that the freedom for women to make their own decisions is on the ballot this November."
In a nod to his announced strategy, President Joe Biden on Wednesday had lunch with historians and scholars "to discuss the ongoing threats to democracy and democratic institutions both here in America and around the world, as well as the opportunities we face as a nation," the White House said.