Last year, Joe Biden became the first US president to join the picket lines in support of a strike. The current White House occupant has repeatedly described himself as the most pro-union president in the history of his country. Workers’ organisations had given him their support before he handed over to Kamala Harris. On Monday, Biden took advantage of Labour Day to participate in Pittsburgh (Pennsylvania) in the first campaign event where he appeared alongside Harris since she was proclaimed the Democratic candidate. The president is trying to help Harris with the vote of white non-university workers, especially those in unions. This week he will also visit two other key states: Michigan and Wisconsin.
Labor Day unofficially marks the final stretch of the campaign for the November 5 elections and the president has shown that he is willing to travel asking for the vote for his vice president. “I will be in the background, but I will do everything I can to help,” the president said on Monday. The line between official and electoral events is somewhat blurred for sitting presidents — or for vice presidents. This Monday’s event was classified as a campaign event, but on Thursday he will go to Wisconsin and on Friday to Michigan with the advantage that events where Biden goes to sell his administration are considered official events, as he also did with Harris in August outside Washington.
Pennsylvania, Wisconsin and Michigan form what Democrats have dubbed the “blue wall”: even if Harris were to lose southern Georgia, Nevada and Arizona, she would win the presidency if she wins in those three constituencies of the so-called Rust Belt, the industrial area somewhat in decline as a result of globalization, and in the rest of the states where Biden won in 2020.
Trump managed to attract many of those traditionally Democratic blue-collar voters in 2016, winning Wisconsin, Michigan and Pennsylvania, but Biden won all three states in 2020. Post-election polls suggest the current president is in a better position to win. beat his Republican rival by more than 20 points among unionized workers.
The president continues to maintain the good relations with the union leaders he has cultivated over the years and who supported him when he was a candidate. Several of them have since asked for votes for Harris. Shawn Fain, leader of the United Auto Workers (UAW) motor trade union, asked for votes for her at the Democratic convention two weeks ago. Biden also appealed on Monday to his roots, as he was born in Scranton, the eighth largest city in Pennsylvania. In his appearances in Wisconsin and Michigan, he will likely boast about the investments his government has encouraged and the strong creation of industrial jobs in recent years.
Knowing what’s happening outside means understanding what’s going to happen inside, so don’t miss anything.
KEEP READING
On Labor Day, the campaigns of Kamala Harris and Tim Walz made an effort to participate in events in those three decisive states, while Trump paused without explanation. The former president has several campaign events later this week in the decisive states, including a rally on Saturday in Wisconsin. In parallel, both are preparing for the next big date of the campaign, the debate on September 10.
On Monday, Walz — whose motorcade was involved in a traffic accident that left several people slightly injured — participated in a union festival in Milwaukee, which Biden attended two years ago while campaigning for the midterm elections. Harris, for her part, did not hold any large mass events, but has participated in two with reduced capacity. The vice president began the day with a rally in the gymnasium of a Detroit high school, where hundreds of attendees wore yellow T-shirts and held signs calling for strong unions. The candidate recalled that one of the first Labor Day parades took place in Detroit some 140 years ago and that everyone benefits from the work of unions.
Then came the event at a union hall in Pittsburgh, alongside Biden, who on this occasion was her opening act, as the party’s standing (she is the candidate) weighed against that of the Executive. He was greeted with chants of “Thank you, Joe,” also chanted by his vice president.
The president, who spoke for about 25 minutes, compared to just over a quarter of an hour for the candidate, devoted most of his speech to defending his administration. He did so with the habit he has acquired lately of sometimes speaking with a sigh and then shouting, which does not contribute much to his dialectic.
“Folks, we’ve made a lot of progress, and Kamala and I are going to keep making progress, and she’s going to keep making progress,” Biden promised. He called Harris the only “rational” choice for president in November. He repeated what he had already said at the Democratic convention, that choosing her as vice president was the “best” decision of his presidency and encouraged union members to vote for her and elect her president: “It will be the best decision you will ever make.”
Corporate protectionism
Harris is seeking that tricky balance between being the candidate of continuity and change, which is even more difficult when she appears on stage alongside the president. This time, she did not deviate from her current boss’s speech one bit. She even pointed to the opposition to the purchase of US Steel, the century-old American steel company, by the Japanese company Nippon Steel. “US Steel is a historic American company, and it is vital for our nation to maintain strong American steel companies. And I couldn’t agree more with President Biden: US Steel must remain American-owned and operated,” she said, joining Biden’s protectionist policy.
Beyond that, Harris tried to connect with labor demands. “Everywhere I go, I tell people, ‘Look, you may not be in a union, but you better thank a union member,’” Harris said, noting that collective bargaining by unions helped secure the five-day workweek, sick pay and other key benefits, as well as secure safer working conditions. “When unions are strong, America is strong,” she said, echoing Biden’s refrain to highlight the role of unions. “We’re very proud to be the most union-friendly administration in American history.”
With a more combative speech than on previous occasions, Harris then went toe-to-toe with Trump: “In this election, there are two very different visions for our nation. One focuses on the future, the other on the past,” she said, identifying with the first option. “It is a little retrograde that these people have been suggesting for years that the measure of a leader’s strength is based on who you knock down, (…) when we know that the true measure of a leader’s strength is based on who you lift up,” she continued. “As we fight to move forward. Donald Trump is trying to take us back, even to a time when workers were not free to organize,” she insisted, giving way to one of her slogans: “We will not go back.”
Follow all the information on the US elections at our weekly newsletter.
#Joe #Biden #enters #campaign #Kamala #Harris #workingclass #vote #key #states
