Pittsfield, Massachusetts.- Vice President Kamala Harris warned a crowd of supporters on Saturday that former President Donald J. Trump had the advantage in his race for the White House given the slim margin leading up to Election Day.
“We have a fight ahead of us, and we are the underdogs in this race, OK?” Harris said in Pittsfield, Massachusetts, at her first fundraiser since President Biden dropped out of his reelection bid six days ago. “We are the underdogs in this race. But this is a people-powered campaign, and we have momentum.”
Polls have shown the vice president catching up to Mr. Trump — welcome news for Democrats after Mr. Biden had fallen significantly behind. Harris’ campaign has also shown new strength in fundraising and in the number of new volunteers, with about three months to go until the election.
Since announcing her bid for the Democratic nomination and receiving Biden’s endorsement, Harris has deployed a sharper message against Trump. On Saturday, she suggested he would restrict Americans’ “most fundamental rights,” including reproductive freedoms, and called him a “bully.”
“What other liberties might be on the table for the taking?” he said during his remarks, repeating his stark warnings about the ramifications of the Supreme Court overturning Roe v. Wade in 2022. “It’s a serious matter.”
She also leaned into a fresh Democratic attack on the former president and his running mate, Sen. JD Vance of Ohio, saying some of the shots the men had taken against her were “just bizarre.”
The event, held at a historic theater in the Berkshires, a popular vacation destination in western Massachusetts, raised more than $1.4 million, well above the $400,000 organizers had hoped to raise, according to Harris’ campaign. About 800 people attended performances by singer James Taylor, cellist Yo-Yo Ma and pianist Emanuel Ax.
Harris’s rise to the front of the ticket has boosted Democratic fundraising. Her campaign said it has raised at least $130 million since Biden left the race. Big donors who abandoned her after her disastrous debate performance last month have flocked back to Harris, and her supporters have held several online fundraisers that have drawn tens of thousands of attendees.
Even before the vice president replaced Biden as the nominee, there were signs that Harris was generating more enthusiasm among Democrats. Last weekend, she headlined a fundraiser in Provincetown, Massachusetts, that raised more than $2 million, double what organizers had expected.
While Biden was ahead of Trump in fundraising for much of the campaign, the former president has pulled ahead in recent months. But Democrats still hold an advantage in campaign infrastructure, such as the number of offices open in battleground states.
Harris’s campaign has put the party’s new energy on display. When the vice president landed at a regional airport ahead of her fundraiser in Pittsfield, a crowd of more than 150 people gathered to greet her. Hundreds more, chanting “Ka-ma-la,” waited outside the Colonial Theater, where the fundraiser was held. Mr. Biden rarely saw such welcoming committees.
“Generations of Americans before us led the fight for freedom,” Harris said at the fundraiser. “And now the baton is in our hands.”
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