Amid a slow start, Biden hits 2024 campaign trail with a nod to labor support

Two months after President Joe Biden announced plans to seek re-election, his campaign operation is still very much a work in progress. No campaign headquarters has opened its doors. Only a handful of key staff members are on the job. And the candidate has been — and plans to continue — largely focusing on his day job.

For now, Biden’s team is relying on more than a little help from its friends to tide it over.

On Saturday in Philadelphia, the city where his 2020 campaign was based, the nation’s largest labor unions were instead putting on his first public political event of his 2024 campaign. They did so a day after an unprecedentedly early and coordinated series of announcements from a half-dozen unions that aren’t always on the same page.

“But if there’s anything that unifies, it’s a pro-union president,” AFL-CIO President Liz Shuler told NBC News.

She and other leaders of major unions represented Saturday said their coordinated efforts were about sending a message to their members and to the country about both what they say is Biden’s sterling record on labor issues and the economy and also the high stakes of the 2024 vote.

“When you have nurses, janitors, construction trades and teachers all getting together in three weeks to say we’re going to do this, that is a message to workers all over the country that this man cares, he cares about you, and he cares about us as working people,” said Randi Weingarten, the president of the American Federation of Teachers.

And it’s not just unions. Earlier in the week, major environmental and climate-focused political organizations similarly announced their 2024 endorsements together. And next week, ahead of the first anniversary of the Supreme Court’s striking down constitutional protections for abortion, major women’s groups are expected to make a similar unified show of support for the Biden-Harris ticket.

Biden advisers have worked for months to line up the coordinated announcements with two goals in mind — showing that the party is solidly behind Biden, 80, and showing there will be significant reinforcements to rally key voting constituencies — union workers, young voters and women.

An adviser acknowledged the campaign “is still building up” but said there is “no reason for us to have a full-fledged campaign” this early.

“One of the important things about these early endorsements really is that these are membership organizations. The early communication, the early engagement with their members around the president’s record … is critical