Biden opens 2024 campaign push with planned speech ahead of January 6 anniversary

By Arlette Saenz and Sam Fossum, CNN

(CNN) — President Joe Biden will use the backdrop of two historic sites in Pennsylvania and South Carolina in the coming week to lay out some of the central arguments of his 2024 reelection bid, including protecting democracy and personal freedoms, as he prepares for a possible rematch with former President Donald Trump in November.

The January push, which will also include separate events for Vice President Kamala Harris, marks Biden’s first public campaign appearances of 2024 after spending most of last year traveling for official White House events and closed-door political fundraisers. It comes as campaign officials are eager to ramp up a contrast with Trump, who they view as the likely Republican nominee, as the GOP primary contests kick off this month.

Biden on Friday will travel to the battleground state of Pennsylvania to deliver a speech near Valley Forge, the historic Revolutionary War site that housed George Washington and the Continental Army nearly 250 years ago.

The president had been originally scheduled to deliver remarks on Saturday – the third anniversary of the January 6, 2021, insurrection at the US Capitol – but they were moved a day earlier due to “impending inclement weather,” according to the Biden campaign. Biden will deliver the speech at Montgomery County Community College in Blue Bell, Pennsylvania.

“The president will make the case directly that democracy and freedom, two powerful ideas that united the 13 colonies and that generations throughout our nation’s history have fought and died for a stone’s throw from where he’ll be Saturday, remains central to the fight we’re in today,” said Quentin Fulks, the Biden-Harris deputy campaign manager.

The president will then travel to Charleston, South Carolina, on Monday to speak at Mother Emanuel AME Church, a historically Black church where nine people were killed after a gunman opened fire on a Bible study group in 2015.

“Whether it is White supremacists descending on a historic American city of Charlottesville, the assault on our nation’s capital on January 6, or a White supremacist murdering churchgoers at Mother Emanuel nearly nine years ago, America is worried about the rise in political violence and determined to stand against it,” Fulks added.

Harris will make her own trip to South Carolina on Saturday, delivering remarks at the 7th Episcopal District AME Church Women’s Missionary Society annual retreat in Myrtle Beach. The state helped revitalized Biden’s primary campaign in 2020, and its February 3 primary will serve as a key test with Black voters.

Later this month, Harris will commemorate the 51st anniversary of Roe v. Wade by kicking off a reproductive freedoms tour in Wisconsin as the campaign looks to make abortion rights a central focus of their arguments.

Biden’s political events are expected to pick up in pace in the coming months, though officials would not outline how frequently he will hit the campaign trail in the immediate future. The campaign is expected to spend the early months of 2024 scaling up its operations, including hiring more battleground state leadership this month, with the goal of operating at “full steam” by early summer. The Biden team is also expected to announce a new advertising campaign ahead of Biden’s trip to Pennsylvania this week.

The moves come as Biden’s team is looking to move the needle with skeptical voters as some polls have shown the president trailing Trump in hypothetical head-to-head match-ups. Campaign officials have long argued early polls are not predictive of the final outcome and that the choice facing voters will become clearer as more people begin to focus on what’s at stake in 2024.

“When Joe Biden ran for president four years ago, he said we are in the battle for the soul of America. And as we look towards November 2024, we still are. The threat Donald Trump posed in 2020 to American democracy has only grown more dire in the years since,” said Biden-Harris campaign manager Julie Chavez Rodriguez. “The choice for voters next year will not simply be between competing philosophies of governing. The choice for the American people in November 2024 will be about protecting our democracy and every Americans’ fundamental freedoms.”

Officials said they’re also prepared for the possibility that a different candidate emerges as the GOP nominee but argued the Republican field has fully embraced Trump’s approach and agenda.

“The 2024 field has made clear time and time again that they don’t just accept, they give their full-throated endorsement to Donald Trump’s anti-democratic, anti-freedom rhetoric and actions,” said Chavez Rodriguez.

Chavez Rodriguez also acknowledged the tight margins of the 2024 election when asked by CNN about what resources the campaign will need to expend as it faces competition from third party candidates who are expected to continue running and could peel off critical voters for the president’s reelection efforts.

“We know that this will be, you know, a really close to election and the President and Vice President have multiple paths to victory. And our campaign is going to continue to focus on really turning out their voters, persuading our persuadables, and continuing to build the coalition that sent the President and Vice President to the White House in 2020,” Rodriguez said.

The campaign also highlighted investments it is making to communicate to voters, including Black and Hispanic voters, amid some signs of strains within key parts of its coalition. But amid waning support for Biden among voters from those two demographics, Fulks wouldn’t say if the campaign was concerned but that Biden and Harris’ trips to South Carolina are about “practicing what we preach.”

“When it comes to voters of color, and if we’re worried, look, our campaign has been putting in the work to do everything we need to do to communicate with communities of color next Fall to make sure that they turn out,” Fulks told reporters.

He added that the campaign has sought to invest earlier and more than ever in communicating with those voters through political advertising and early organizing efforts.

“That sends a clear signal that we’re not going to wait and parachute into these communities the last minute and ask them for their vote. We’re going to earn their vote,” he said, continuing: “Voters of color are the ones who have the most at stake in this election and we need to make sure that every single one of them understands the choice in front of them.”

This headline and story have been updated with additional developments.

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