Harris presents Biden’s balancing act in Pennsylvania

PITTSBURGH – Kamala Harris doesn’t want Joe Biden’s baggage. But he also trusts her to help him win the election.

Nowhere is that more evident than in Pennsylvania, the critical battleground where Biden spent his childhood. While working-class voters here still blame the president for high prices — and sigh with relief that the cantankerous Biden is no longer on the ballot — many still think of him as “Union Joe.”

For Harris, who appeared with Biden on the campaign trail here Monday, Biden’s deployment is both an opportunity and a risk. Biden remains an unpopular president, and Republicans are seizing on his position in his administration to convince voters that Harris would be Biden 2.0 if elected. In a nod to this political reality, Harris isn’t expected to campaign with Biden every weekend or put pictures of him in every ad.

But Harris’ team is still planning to deploy Biden strategically, particularly in Pennsylvania and other Rust Belt swing states where he remains most attractive.

It’s no coincidence that Harris chose a day to work at the Pittsburgh union hall, where members in green IBEW t-shirts topped with hot dogs, sauerkraut and a red-white-and-blue sheet cake. that. Many Democrats believe Harris has the opportunity — and the need — to broaden his support among union members, some of whom have drifted to Donald Trump even though he has won most of the popular labor votes. When Biden ended his re-election bid in July, Harris agreed to meet with the Teamsters, a union that had maintained an icy distance from Biden and refused to endorse him.

“President Biden has long had a very close, special relationship with Pennsylvania, but especially with the workforce of Western Pennsylvania. If you think about his 2020 campaign, many of the unions in western Pennsylvania are the unions that have been with him from the beginning,” said Democratic Lt. Gov. Austin Davis, who is from the former steel city outside Pittsburgh. “He’s going to be a very strong replacement for Vice President Harris when we’re going into election day, especially with that group.”

In Pittsburgh, his first campaign stop with Biden in the battleground state since he officially became the Democratic nominee, Harris sought to invigorate organized labor, which Biden treated assiduously, reminding the crowd that mail-in voting in Pennsylvania would begin in a few days. He hailed Pittsburgh as “the cradle of the American labor movement.”

Speaking to an audience of more than 600, the setting was much more intimate than the arena-rocking protests Harris has led in recent weeks.

But the rhetoric was much the same. Angry at his opponent, Harris ripped Trump for opposing minimum wage increases, appointing “union busters” to the National Labor Relations Board and cutting taxes for corporations and the wealthy. “America has tried these failed policies before, and we’re not going back,” he said.

Harris also announced in Pittsburgh for the first time his position — shared by Biden and Trump — that US Steel “should remain American owned,” a priority of the United Steelworkers union, which opposes its proposed sale to Japan’s Nippon Steel Corp.

Harris, along with the labor leaders who spoke before him, touted Biden’s record and touted it as their shared legacy, highlighting union jobs created as a result of the administration’s biggest legislative achievements.

Singing “Thanks, Joe,” Biden delivered a speech that touched on his Scranton roots, his history with Labor Day celebrations in Pittsburgh and his administration’s pro-union bona fides. He talked about walking the line as president and passing bipartisan infrastructure legislation, saying Trump, in contrast, “didn’t rebuild anything!”

He promised that Harris would “build on the progress” of his administration and be “a historic pro-union president.”

The Pittsburgh stop was part of a multi-state Labor Day strike by Harris and his running mate, Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz.

Walz campaigned in the swing state of Wisconsin at a Laborfest event, where he argued that the so-called “blue wall” is strong and strengthened by unions: “If those guys think there’s a crack in the Blue Wall, they’re sadly mistaken.”

Meanwhile, Harris kicked off Monday’s swing rally with union members in Detroit, acknowledging the city’s seminal place in labor history and its hard-earned achievements while vowing to continue her fight in the Oval Office.

“Trump is a scab!” the crowd shouted, encouraged by Debbie Dingell (D-Mich.), walking among the picnic tables that filled the parquet floor before the speech began.

Trump spokeswoman Karoline Leavitt said in a statement: “Kamala Harris is spending the Labor Day campaigning with her accomplice Joe Biden in a desperate attempt to sway the American people. Meanwhile, this Labor Day Americans are working harder than ever to afford gas, groceries and rent because Kamala Harris broke our economy and is proud of it.

Harris’s strategy of campaigning alongside Biden, albeit cautiously, is a gamble: Most voters think the economy is on the wrong track, and the vice president is a loyal member of the Biden administration, which many of them believe is to blame.

Right now, he’s trying to thread the needle, sympathizing with voters about inflation and promising to crack down on price gouging, as well as promoting Biden’s popular records, such as capping insulin prices, in his TV ads.

Polls show Trump leads Harris among voters on who they trust to manage the economy, but recent polls show his lead narrowing.

Trump and Ohio Sen. JD Vance, the GOP vice presidential nominee, are trying to convince voters that Harris is responsible for the parts of Biden’s financial record they don’t like. At a campaign stop in Michigan last week, Vance said “Kamala Harris has been calling the shots” in the Biden administration.

In Pennsylvania, where many in the GOP have known Biden for decades, some Republicans are making a slightly different argument. In an interview over Labor Day weekend, GOP Rep. Mike Kelly, who represents parts of western Pennsylvania, emphasized Harris’ California roots and described him as too liberal for voters here.

Kelly said Harris is not nearly the kind of Pittsburgh Democrat that President Biden is.

“If you talked to Pittsburghers, they would recognize Joe Biden, wouldn’t they? Scranton, blue-collar, Catholic, strong working man. Now I think with Vice President Harris, this is an entity that they don’t really know,” he said. “And why would they? You’re from California, you have a completely different ideology and different thoughts than we have in Pittsburgh.

Sen. Laphonza Butler (D-Calif.), who first met Harris as a Los Angeles-based labor director when Harris was running for attorney general, acknowledged the vice president has “room to grow” among union households. But he said Harris has been a champion of labor throughout his career.

“He’s going to be at least as profitable as President Biden,” he said. “But I think the opportunities ahead for our country will allow him to be more pro-Union.”

Meredith Lee Hill contributed to this report.