Vice-President Kamala Harris’s campaign has backed away from President Joe Biden in the final days of the 2024 election, viewing the unpopular incumbent as a liability in her quest to succeed him, according to several White House and Harris campaign officials familiar with the planning.

Officials on Harris’s campaign think that holding joint events with Biden would “only hurt her” at the most crucial stage of the race, as one adviser put it. That leaves Biden, who has expressed an interest in helping stump for her in the coming days, left to arrange his own, campaign-approved events through trade groups and unions.

By all accounts, the vice-president has been unflinchingly loyal to the 81-year-old President whose campaign she took over three months ago. She has declined to put much space between her policies and his, and has been careful to show deference, even in moments where she could have broken away.

“Vice-President Harris is grateful for President Biden’s support and appreciates that he is campaigning for her,” said Ian Sams, a campaign spokesman.

But personal loyalty is now just one dimension of their complex relationship.

In recent weeks, Harris has quietly added some new questions to her daily round of calls to outside allies and advisers, a regular routine she has kept up for much of her career to make sure she is taking the pulse of what is happening outside her immediate bubble.

She has gingerly peppered people who are close to Biden with questions about the President’s mind-set and his emotional and physical health as Election Day draws nearer: “How do you think he’s doing?” she will ask, according to two people briefed on those calls.

Over the weekend, the difference between the vice-president’s campaign schedule and the President’s could not have been starker.

Harris appeared with the pop superstar Beyoncé at a rally on Friday in Texas with tens of thousands of people, and then joined the political superstar Michelle Obama on Saturday at another event, in Michigan. On Saturday, Biden travelled to Pittsburgh to participate in a get-out-the-vote event with the Labourers’ International Union of North America, speaking to members in a union hall with barely 100 supporters.

His team is also hoping to get him out onto the trail in support of Democratic Senate candidates.

New York Times News Service