Joe Biden joins the fight to help Kamala Harris win working-class votes in key states | Elections 2024

Last year, Joe Biden became the first U.S. president to join the picket lines in support of a strike. The current occupant of the White House has repeatedly described himself as the most pro-union president in his country’s history. He had been supported by labor groups before he handed over the reins to Kamala Harris. On Monday, Biden used Labor Day to attend his first campaign event alongside his vice president since she was declared the Democratic nominee, in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. Biden wants to help Harris win the votes of white, non-college-educated workers, particularly union workers. The president will also travel to two other key states this week: Michigan and Wisconsin.

Labor Day unofficially marks the final stretch of the Nov. 5 election campaign, and the president has shown he’s willing to travel to drum up votes for his vice president. “I’ll be on the sidelines. I’ll do whatever I can to help,” he said Monday. The line between official and electoral acts is somewhat blurred for sitting presidents and vice presidents. Monday’s event was classified as a campaign event, but he’ll be in Wisconsin on Thursday and Michigan on Friday, with the benefit of official acts in which Biden sells his administration being considered official, like the one he did with Harris outside Washington in August.

Pennsylvania, Wisconsin and Michigan form what Democrats have called “the blue wall.” Even if Harris loses Georgia, Nevada and Arizona, she would win the presidency if she wins these three states in the so-called Rust Belt — the industrial heartland of the US, now in somewhat of a decline as a result of globalization — and the rest of the states where Biden won in 2020.

Trump managed to appeal to many of the traditional Democratic working-class voters in 2016, winning Wisconsin, Michigan and Pennsylvania, but Biden won back all three states in 2020. Post-election polls suggest the incumbent president is beating his Republican rival by more than 20 points among union members.

The president has maintained the good relationships he has built with labor leaders over the years, who supported him when he was a candidate. Several have since called for a vote for Harris. Shawn Fain, leader of the United Auto Workers (UAW), called for a vote for the vice president at the Democratic convention two weeks ago. Biden also appealed to his roots on Monday, having been born in Scranton, Pennsylvania’s eighth-largest city. During his appearances in Wisconsin and Michigan, he is expected to highlight the investment his administration has encouraged and the strong manufacturing job creation of recent years.

On Labor Day, the Harris-Walz campaign made a push to participate in events in those three decisive states, while Trump paused without explanation. The former president has several campaign events scheduled in the swing states later this week, including a rally Saturday in Wisconsin. At the same time, both sides are gearing up for the campaign’s next big showdown, the Sept. 10 debate.

On Monday, Walz — whose motorcade was involved in a car crash that left several with minor injuries — attended a union festival in Milwaukee, which Biden visited two years ago while campaigning for Congress. Harris, by contrast, did not host large events, instead attending two rallies with limited seating. The vice president began the day with a rally in a Detroit high school gymnasium, where hundreds of attendees wore yellow T-shirts and carried signs calling for strong unions. The Democratic nominee recalled that one of the first Labor Day parades took place in Detroit about 140 years ago and that everyone benefits from the work of unions.

Then came the event at a union hall in Pittsburgh, with Biden, this time her opening act, since the party had more prestige than the administration. He was greeted with chants of “Thank you, Joe,” which his vice president joined in.

The president, who spoke for about 25 minutes compared with just over 15 minutes for Harris, devoted most of his speech to defending his administration, a practice he has developed lately of sometimes speaking with a sigh and then raising his voice, which does little to advance his dialectic.

“Folks, we’ve made a lot of progress, and Kamala and I are going to build on that progress, and she’s going to build on that,” Biden promised. He called Harris the only “rational” choice for president and reiterated what he said at the Democratic convention that choosing her as vice president was the “best decision” of his presidency. He urged union members to vote for her and elect her president: “It will be the best decision you’ll ever make.”

Corporate protectionism

Harris is striking a delicate balance between being the candidate of continuity and change, which is even harder when she appears onstage alongside the president. This time around, she didn’t deviate an inch from her current boss’s rhetoric. She even took aim at opposition to the purchase of US Steel by Japan’s Nippon Steel. “US Steel is a historic American company, and it’s vital to our nation that we maintain strong American steel companies,” she said, backing Biden’s protectionist policies. “And I can’t agree more with President Biden; US Steel must remain American-owned and American-run.”

In addition, Harris tried to connect with union demands. “Everywhere I go, I tell people, look, you may not be a union member, 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 safer working conditions. “When unions are strong, America is strong,” she said, in a phrase similar to one Biden used to emphasize the role of unions. “We are very proud to be the most union-friendly administration in the history of the United States,” Harris reiterated.

Delivering a more combative speech than in previous occasions, Harris then moved into a melee against Trump: “In this election, there are two very different visions for our nation. One is focused on the future, the other is focused on the past,” she said. “As we struggle to move forward, Donald Trump is trying to pull us back, including back to a time before workers had the freedom to organize,” she insisted, as attendees chanted “we are not going back!”

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