US Vice President Kamala Harris campaigned by bus in southern Georgia on Wednesday as Democrats try to capitalize on a wave of enthusiasm and put the swing state back in play in November’s election against Donald Trump.
President Joe Biden appeared on track to lose the southern state he won from Republican Trump in 2020, but since Harris replaced Biden as the nominee five weeks ago, the party has been hopeful it can win it back.
Both Harris and Trump are now ramping up their campaigns in seven key battleground states as the extraordinary — and now ultra-short — White House race enters its final 10 weeks.
“We are putting forth the energy and hard work to win again in 2024,” Harris’ campaign said.
Riding a wave of excitement from last week’s Democratic National Convention, Harris and her running mate, Tim Walz, are traveling through southern parts of Georgia on a two-day bus tour.
The campaign is focused on Black and working-class voters, whom the campaign believes are key to Harris’ victory in the state in November.
He and Walz began their tour in Savannah, where they met with students at the historically black university, then headed by bus to rural communities, where some spectators waved Trump flags, and then stopped at Liberty County High School in Hinesville.
“We just came here to let you know that our country is counting on you,” Harris told members of the student marching band there.
Back in Savannah, the candidates visited a small restaurant called Sandfly Bar-B-Q, where they chatted and posed for photos with diners and staff.
“You’ve got to stay in it,” Harris said, encouraging a patron about the upcoming election.
‘Dangerously generous’
The bus tour will culminate Thursday with a rally in Savannah, where the 59-year-old will face a key test that same day: her first interview since launching the campaign, in a joint appearance on CNN with Walz.
Republicans have criticized him for not confronting media scrutiny earlier, and Trump spokesman Jason Miller on Wednesday accused him of using Walz as a “human shield.”
But after the 81-year-old Biden stunned the nation by dropping out of the election, Harris has expressed contentment in letting her campaign do the talking during these busy weeks.
He has breathed new life into the Democratic Party, raising more than half a billion dollars and eroding Trump’s lead in the polls.
However, Harris insists she is still a weak contender and that victory or defeat in the election will be decided in battleground states.
In the final days of Biden’s campaign, increasingly poor polls showed that his only realistic hope for victory lay in winning the three “Rust Belt” states of Pennsylvania, Michigan, and Wisconsin.
Harris is now also targeting four “Sun Belt” states – Georgia, Arizona, Nevada and North Carolina – to give her multiple ways to win the overall Electoral College vote.
The Peach State is a particularly tough target. Biden won it by a slim margin of less than 12,000 votes in 2020, a result that Trump bitterly contested.
Republicans now face criminal charges related to an alleged plot to overturn that vote in Georgia.
In a boost to her campaign on Wednesday, the latest Fox News poll showed Harris leading Trump in Georgia 50 percent to 48 percent.
But Trump is also stepping up his swing state campaign as he seeks to regain ground after a misstep by new flagbearer Harris.
Not only is the vice president two decades younger than Trump, of Black and South Asian descent, but she is also vying to become the first female US president.
The campaign said Trump will attack Harris’s “dangerous liberal policies” in Michigan and Wisconsin on Thursday before traveling to Pennsylvania on Friday.
But his team was mired in controversy on Wednesday after a report said Trump’s entourage heckled and verbally abused staff during a political visit to America’s holiest site for war dead.
The incident occurred when an official at Arlington National Cemetery tried to prevent Trump’s allies from taking photographs of those killed in recent wars, where filming and staging political events is prohibited, National Public Radio reported.
(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)
