Do the Obamas imagine Kamala has the stardust to win the White House?

The famous American comedian Dave Chappelle met Kamala Harris in 2007 at a charity dinner in California. Harris promptly boasted that her ‘friend’ Barack Obama was about to announce his run for the presidency.

To prove what good pals she and Obama were, she then took out her mobile in front of Chappelle to ring the soon-to-be 44th President of the United States. But the call went through to voicemail.

That rather sums up the Harris-Obama relationship. She has always been desperate for his extraordinary star power, but he’s just never been that into her.

As a rising star in East Coast political circles in the late 2000s, Harris was often called ‘the female Obama’. In a Democratic party obsessed with identity politics, that’s perhaps the ultimate accolade.

Harris is, like Obama, a mixed-race former law student who casts herself as progressive yet pragmatic. In 2020, she kicked off her presidential campaign by ‘slow jamming the news’ – reading headlines to smooth jazz – with the TV host Jimmy Fallon, an imitation of one of Obama’s famous publicity stunts.

But Obama was cool and Harris was not. Her performance fell flat and so did her candidacy. Voters weren’t too keen on her either, it turned out.

Until now, that is. Suddenly, Kamala Harris, widely seen just a few days ago as the least popular vice president in history, is the hottest political phenomenon on the planet. Tens of thousands of young people are signing up for Harris 2024 and the polls have tightened in her favour.

On Thursday, a rally in Detroit attracted an impressive 15,000 people, with the crowd bopping to Beyoncé over the Tannoy before breaking into frenzied applause for the presidential nominee.

And just two weeks ago, it was Barack and wife Michelle who rang up Kamala. The world’s most popular Democrats told her on loudspeaker they ‘couldn’t be prouder’ to endorse her as the Democratic presidential candidate.

‘This is going to be historic,’ said Michelle. Donald Trump called it ‘the phoniest phone call you’ve ever seen’.

But, as Trump knows well, success in America is all about faking it until you make it. Today, there’s no denying that, after four agonising years of supporting the ailing Joe Biden, Democrats are buzzing again.

Kamala-mania is already the biggest phenomenon in progressive politics since Obama-mania 16 years ago – in large part because Democrats keep saying that it is. 

You can’t turn on the news, in America or Britain, without hearing some partisan analysts saying that ‘the energy’ around the Harris campaign reminds them of Obama in 2008.

That year, of course, Obama surfed to the presidency on an unprecedented tidal wave of global support. His campaign cleverly used Facebook, then a new force in politics, to harness what was called ‘the power of friendship’.

Today, Harris is the latest phenomenon on TikTok, the fastest-growing social media platform and the place Generation Z goes for its news. Legions of so-called content creators across the world are frantically disseminating vast amounts of pro-Harris videos and memes.

In 2008, celebrities all over the world fell madly in love with Obama. They campaigned for him, wrote ballads for him, and showered him in adulation. In 2024, Hollywood’s A-listers are at it again – cheerleading for the Democrats. Beyoncé, George Clooney and Jeff Bridges are all behind her, as are many of the younger generation.

The British pop star Charli XCX has called Harris ‘brat’ – the highest compliment, we’re told, ‘like that girl who is a little messy and likes to party… [and] is very honest, very blunt’. And, at of a Harris rally in Atlanta this week, rapper Megan Thee Stallion twerked and gyrated – sorry, performed. ‘We about to make history with the first female president, the first black female president,’ said Megan. ‘Let’s get this done, hotties.’

If it all feels a bit desperate, that’s because it is. With just over 90 days to go until America’s election day, Team Harris is urgently trying to recreate Obama’s magic ‘Yes, we can’ formula. ‘Together, we can,’ she says, and ‘Yes, we will’.

In their determination to defeat Trump, a large number of Democrats are willing to believe her.

At the Democratic convention in Chicago this month, Obama is expected to give one of his mesmerising speeches about the arc of history and progressive politics. Organisers will thematically bind the words of the 44th President to Harris, the woman they want to be the 47th.

There will be plenty more fawning celebrities. The TV networks will keep gushing. At some point, though, reality must crash into the picture.

In 2008, Obama emerged as a true political phenomenon, as he brushed aside Hillary Clinton to win the Democratic primaries and then beat John McCain at the ballot to win the White House.

Harris, by contrast, has no good claim to a popular mandate. She has simply been shoe-horned in as her party’s nominee because Democrats could not keep up the pretence that Joe Biden was fit to be commander-in-chief.

Obama is well known for being careful with his words and cautious to a fault in his policy positions. Harris, on the other hand, has always had a tendency to jump on every passing fad and call it one of her key priorities.

Obama was, and is, arguably the most brilliant political orator of the 21st century, yet anyone who has seen Kamala talk knows she is no Barack. She repeats herself ad nauseam, can’t extemporise, and speaks in famously indigestible ‘word salads’. She’s better at reading a teleprompter than Biden – but that’s hardly a high bar.

Obama has never been the liberal saint he is portrayed as, yet his staff tend to remain loyal. ‘The Obamas are just great people,’ says one Democratic source. ‘With her it’s just not the same.’

Meanwhile, Harris goes through advisers at a Meghan Markle-esque clip. Indeed, as she floundered in the early days of her vice presidency, ‘Obama people’ were drafted in to improve her image, such as speechwriter Adam Frankel and press officer Peter Velz. They soon quit.

‘You have to put up with a constant amount of soul-destroying criticism and her own lack of confidence,’ one former aide told the press.

From now until election day, the Obama and Harris families will put on a great show of unity. But the Obamas appear to be well aware of Harris’s shortcomings, and their alliance is born out of a desperation to keep Trump out of the White House. Democratic sources suggest one of the reasons Obama took so long to turn against Biden was that he has so little faith in Harris.

Barack did finally move against Joe. Sensational reports this week claim that on July 21 Obama called Biden and threatened: ‘Here’s the deal. We have Kamala’s approval to invoke the 25th amendment’ – the constitutional instrument for removing a president who is unable to fulfil their duties.

Senior Democrats deny that story. There is less doubt, however, that Obama dithered over whether to support Harris. He and Michelle were the last notable Democrats to endorse her.

The day after Biden withdrew from the race, his vice president claimed that their administration had ‘already surpassed the legacy of most presidents who serve two terms’. That was widely interpreted as a dig at Obama.

Dave Garrow, Obama’s biographer, said: ‘It’s got to deeply rankle Obama that the Biden presidency is widely viewed as more consequential than his.’

Garrow also suggested that the bad blood between the Obama and the Biden-Harris team flowed both ways, adding: ‘The people around Biden have always been very sensitive to the way Obama World looks down on them.’

And Biden is, of course, said to be fuming at Obama for his betrayal. This week, he pointedly referred to his more liberal record on same-sex unions. ‘I was the first guy to come out for gay marriage,’ he said, exaggerating as usual. ‘Remember that little problem with the Obama administration.’

Biden was referring to a row he caused as vice president during Obama’s re-election bid in 2012, when he told the media he felt ‘comfortable’ with gay marriage. Obama, who’s position on the matter was still officially ‘evolving’, let it be known that his VP had gone ‘a little bit over his skis’.

Obama’s aides were furious that Biden had stolen a progressive march on him. (That didn’t stop Newsweek giving Obama a rainbow halo and calling him ‘The First Gay President’ on its May cover that year. The New Yorker had dubbed Bill Clinton ‘The First Black President’ in 1998).

Obama often found his gaffe-prone running-mate maddening – but was always been concerned about not hurting Biden’s feelings. In 2012, when his speechwriters gave him a joke about how he was ‘almost positive’ Biden would carry on as vice president, Obama reportedly had the line removed.

Yet a sense still lingers in Democratic circles that the Obamas are too aloof from other politicians. Many Democrats wanted Michelle to run for the presidency in November in place of Biden and Harris. She was never interested. ‘It would be a step down for her,’ joked one Washington insider.

Her husband, meanwhile, is determined to fight Trumpism and protect his legacy. But he also cares a lot about preserving his golden brand, it is claimed. There’s just too much money to be made from it. The Obamas’ media production company, Higher Ground, has made lucrative deals with Netflix and Spotify.

Their daughters, Malia and Sasha, are in showbusiness, too. Malia, 26, wrote and directed a film called The Heart, which is, in her words, ‘about lost objects and lonely people and forgiveness and regret’. Critics weren’t too merciful, however – one called her a ‘nepo-baby’. Meanwhile, 23-year-old Sasha, or Natasha as she now calls herself, did some casting work for the TV series Couples Therapy.

Presidential families tend to be dynastic. The Kennedys, the Bushes, the Clintons, the Bidens and the Trumps have all seen their children pursue political careers. Yet the Obamas seem more comfortable in luvvie-land.

Mr and Mrs O still have a grand home in Washington’s Kalorama neighbourhood, not far from Amazon founder Jeff Bezos’s home. But they prefer to hang out with the rich and famous at their £9.4 million mansion in Martha’s Vineyard. ‘I do think at a certain point you’ve made enough money,’ Obama, the former community organiser in Chicago, once piously told a group of bankers in 2010.

In his case, it’s hard to know where that point is. He charges up to £314,000 per speech, makes much more from his books, and is thought to be worth £55 million.

Harris and her husband Doug Emhoff, by contrast, are believed to have £6.3 million in assets and investments – hardly poor but not, by American standards, in the big league. Given her California background and impeccable Hollywood and Silicon Valley contacts, however, Harris can expect to make a vast fortune when she steps away from politics.

If she breaks the ultimate glass ceiling by being elected as the First Madam President, she’ll go to her grave as rich as Croesus.

But can Harris and Doug ever match the gilded glamour of the Obamas? No, they can’t.

• Freddy Gray is deputy editor of The Spectator