Vice President Kamala Harris and former President Donald Trump kicked off their campaigns Thursday with starkly different approaches to engaging voters in battleground states that will determine the outcome of the presidential election.
In North Carolina, Democratic candidate Harris touted the support of Republicans who crossed party lines at rallies in Charlotte and Greensboro. She also delighted a bipartisan audience with promises to protect health care and abortion access, praised her performance in Tuesday’s debate, criticized Trump and cheered on her campaign and the country.
“We’re having a good time, aren’t we?” a smiling Harris declared as the enthusiastic crowd chanted “USA! USA! USA!”
In the border state of Arizona, Trump, a Republican, proposed making all overtime pay tax-free, in addition to earlier proposals to not tax tips or Social Security payments. But he shoehorned those proposals, along with vague promises to lower housing costs, into an unbridled speech marked by his most inflammatory rhetoric about immigrants and the immigrants themselves, aspersions on Harris and others, and dark, exaggerated portrayals of a nation in freefall that he claims only he can reverse.
“I was angry at the debate,” Trump said, mocking how commentators had described his performance on Tuesday. “Yes, I’m angry, because everything has been terrible since Ms. Harris and President Joe Biden have destroyed our country,” he said. When Trump repeated the word “angry,” his crowd in Tucson responded with chants of “USA! USA! USA!”
The competing visions and narratives underscore the stark choices facing voters in the battleground states that will decide the election. Harris has cast a broad net, leaning on a diverse coalition of Democrats and hoping to attract moderates and even conservative Republicans who rebel against the former president. Trump has sought a broad working-class coalition on his tax proposal while wading into debates about the country and his political opponents that are most directly aimed at his most ardent supporters.
This could become a consistent framework for the final stages of the campaign, after Trump has closed the door on another debate.
It could have been another defining moment in a year already packed with milestones, including Trump’s guilty verdict by a New York jury, his survival of an assassination attempt, Biden ending his reelection bid amid questions about his age and Harris solidifying Democratic support as the first woman of color to lead a major party nominee.
Trump said Thursday he would include his June showdown with Biden in his totals and would not hold a third debate, claiming he won his only showdown with Harris, in Philadelphia on Tuesday.
The post-debate onslaught reflected the narrow path each candidate has to reach the 270 electoral votes, with campaigning already focused on seven battleground states: Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, North Carolina, Nevada, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin.
Harris’ schedule on Thursday will take her to a state that Trump won twice, but his narrowest overall victory in 2020 — by 1.3 percentage points — while Arizona was one of Trump’s narrowest losses four years ago, having been won by Trump in 2016.
In North Carolina, Ms. Harris emerged victorious after the debate and her campaign has already cut key moments from the debate into ads, but she warned against overconfidence, describing herself as the underdog and making clear what the stakes are.
“This is not 2016 or 2020,” she said in Charlotte. “Imagine Donald Trump without the guardrails.”
She touted the support of Republicans Dick Cheney, a former vice president, and his daughter, former congresswoman Liz Cheney, who both see Trump as a fundamental threat to American values and democracy.
“Democrats, Republicans and independents support our campaign,” Harris said in Charlotte, praising the Cheneys and like-minded Republicans as people who recognize the need to put country before party and defend the Constitution.
But she was a vocal defender of the Affordable Care Act, commonly known as Obamacare, which passed in 2010 over the opposition of nearly all Republicans. She mocked Trump, who has pledged for years to repeal the ACA but said during the debate that he had not yet concretely envisioned a replacement.
“He said the concept of a plan,” Harris said. A concept. A concept. No actual plan. A concept. … 45 million Americans have insurance through the Affordable Care Act. And he’s going to end that on a concept.
She again pushed President Trump to uphold a Supreme Court decision that ended women’s federal right to an abortion, paving the way for Republican-led states to severely restrict and in some cases effectively ban abortion.
Women who have had miscarriages are being denied treatment, and in states with the strictest restrictions, some women may only get treatment when they develop sepsis, Harris said.
The vice president delivered his usual sharp criticism of Project 2025, a 900-page policy agenda prepared by conservatives for a second Trump administration. While Trump has distanced himself from the document, there are notable overlaps between it and some of his own policies, as well as the policy goals of Republicans like the Cheneys.
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First Published: 13 September 2024 | 10:38 AM IST