By EFE
03 Sep 2024, 07:40 AM EDT
New York – Democratic presidential candidate Kamala Harris and US President Joe Biden participated in their first joint campaign event in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, on Monday since the current vice president accepted her party’s nomination for the White House race.
At the event, both men stressed their support for US Steel workers to keep the corporation under national ownership and their opposition to its sale to the Japanese company Nippon Steel.
“Americans are the best steelworkers in the world (…) This iconic American company for more than a century is going to remain American,” claimed Biden, who spoke first, before representatives of the steel union in Pennsylvania and an audience made up mainly of workers in this sector.
During his speech, the president boasted about his management in this legislature, repeating the figure of “16 million new jobs created and 800,000 in factory jobs alone,” arguing that Donald Trump “promised investments, but did nothing” when he was president.
“Thanks to our infrastructure law, Pennsylvania has so far received $17 billion and more than 2,000 projects for clean water, affordable high-speed internet, and more,” Biden added.
Pennsylvania is one of the so-called “swing states” where there is no marked inclination towards the Democratic Party or the Republican Party and where the November elections could be decided by just a few votes.
Aware of this, Biden once again appealed to the sentiment of this state with a manufacturing tradition, arguing that “Wall Street did not build America; the middle class built America, and unions built the middle class,” to the delight of the public.
Currently, according to the FiveThirtyEight polling average, Harris would receive 47.1% of support nationally in the November election, while Trump would get 43.8%.
In her quest to further widen her lead over the Republican candidate, Harris agreed that it is “vital” that companies like US Steel remain American and that, if she reaches the Oval Office, she will fight for “a future of dignity, respect and opportunities for all people.”
“We know that one of the highest forms of patriotism is fighting for the ideals of our country. That is what this election is about and what America’s promise is about, which is what you do in the unions every day,” the vice president said at the event held on the national holiday for Labor Day.
Before the meeting, Harris spoke at a rally in Detroit, also in the “swing state” of Michigan, where she was accompanied by other union leaders, including Shawn Fain, leader of the powerful United Auto Workers (UAW) union.
At the event, the vice president and candidate defended the power of unions to increase progress and the economy of the United States and promised to enact a law that would end “the destruction of unions once and for all.”
“As we fight to move our nation forward, Donald Trump is trying to take us back to the past, but we are not going back,” she said of the Republican candidate, who did not have any campaign events on Labor Day.
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