CNN
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Former President Barack Obama plans to launch a 27-day campaign sprint in Pennsylvania next week for Vice President Kamala Harris, an adviser to the Democratic presidential nominee's campaign said, hoping his star power among Democrats can help propel her to office , which he once held.

Apparently worried about Democratic complacency and aware of the razor-thin results in the polls, Obama – along with his wife Michelle, one of the party's most popular figures – is trying to help Harris in any way he can, aides said.

Thursday's rally in Pittsburgh will be the first in a series of events Obama plans to hold at campaign sites in the weeks leading up to Election Day, according to a senior Harris campaign official.

Aside from rallies, an Obama adviser said the former president wanted to help Democrats by taping candidate-specific ads and making his name available for email appeals for campaign funds, including for Downs–Election race. Last month, he led a $4 million fundraiser for Harris in Los Angeles.

Obama sees the 2024 election as an “all hands on deck” moment, advisers said.

“I wish I could give you a four- or five-point plan on how we're going to win this election. Frankly, the plan is that we will push through it,” he said during the fundraiser in California, according to excerpts from his office.

The event was Obama's first solo fundraising appearance for Harris since she secured the Democratic nomination in the summer As his office said at the time, the total amount he raised for Democrats through events and fundraisers increased to more than $76 million.

There is no question that Obama would have offered his campaign talents to President Joe Biden had he remained in the race. Still, Obama was among the party elders whose quiet maneuvering over the summer made it clear to Biden, his former vice president, that Democrats faced almost certain defeat if he remained on the ticket.

And in his August speech to the Democratic National Convention, Obama called Harris an heir to the political movement he launched in 2008 and said she could “find a new way to meet today's challenges.”

He also warned that the road to the White House would be steep and require an all-out effort from Harris supporters.

“It is up to all of us to fight for the America we believe in. And make no mistake: it will be a fight,” he said.

Obama and Harris have known each other for 20 years. The energy fueling her candidacy and the roaring crowds chanting her name have drawn comparisons to Obama's history-making candidacy in 2008.

Aides to the former president say his first memory of meeting Harris came during a fundraiser for his 2004 Senate run in California.

Four years later, as Obama launched a long-term bid for the White House, Harris defied many in her party and endorsed him over then-Sen. Hillary Clinton, who early on had the support of much of the Democratic establishment and many black leaders.

Harris flew to Springfield, Illinois, to watch him announce his candidacy. A photo from that February day in 2007 shows a windswept Harris – then a district attorney in San Francisco – not on stage or in a VIP room but among the crowd waiting for Obama to walk by and shake her hand.

Ahead of the 2008 Iowa caucuses, she packed her black puffer jacket and boots and headed to Des Moines just after Christmas to join the ranks of Obama's volunteer army.

“None of us were too small,” Harris later recalled, “and we spent hours knocking on doors in freezing temperatures.”

Obama retaliated in 2010, not by knocking on doors, but by endorsing Harris' candidacy for California attorney general. At a rally in Los Angeles that helped boost her campaign, he described Harris as “a dear, dear friend of mine, so I want everyone to do the right thing.”

Fourteen years later, Obama is once again hoping that the country will do right by his friend – and also prevent Donald Trump from returning to the White House.

A Harris victory, Obama told donors last month, “is not going to solve all the craziness that's out there.”

“But every time we win, it solidifies this new future. It opens up these new possibilities. “At some point this will become the new normal and the new reality,” he said.