Both Kamala Harris and Donald Trump are now ramping up their campaigns in seven key battleground states.
Savannah, United States:
U.S. Vice President Kamala Harris campaigned by bus through southern Georgia on Wednesday as Democrats look to ride a wave of enthusiasm and put the swing state back in play in the November election against Donald Trump.
President Joe Biden was on track to lose the southern state he ceded to Republican Trump in 2020, but since Harris replaced Biden as candidate five weeks ago, the party began hoping it could win it again.
Both Harris and Trump are now ramping up their campaigns in seven key battleground states as an extraordinary — and now super-short — White House race enters its final 10-week sprint.
“We are seizing the energy and doing our best to win again in 2024,” Harris’ campaign said.
Riding the wave of enthusiasm from last week’s Democratic National Convention, Harris and running mate Tim Walz are traveling through southern parts of Georgia on a two-day bus tour.
The blitz is aimed at black and working-class voters, who the campaign says are crucial to a Harris win in the state in November.
She and Walz started their tour in Savannah, where they met students from a historically black college, before taking a bus through rural communities where some spectators waved Trump flags, then stopping at Liberty County High School in Hinesville.
“We wanted to come by and let you know that our country is counting on you,” Harris told members of a student marching band there.
Back in Savannah, the candidates ducked into Sandfly Bar-B-Q, a small restaurant where they chatted with diners and staff and posed for photos.
“You’ve got to stay in it,” Harris encouraged a patron about the upcoming election.
‘Dangerously liberal’
The bus tour concludes with a rally Thursday in Savannah, where the 59-year-old also faces a critical test the same day: her first sit-down interview since the start of her campaign, in a joint appearance on CNN with Walz.
Republicans have criticized her for not facing media attention sooner, and Trump spokesman Jason Miller accused her on Wednesday of using Walz as a “human shield.”
But Harris has been content to let her campaign do the talking in the hectic weeks since 81-year-old Biden stunned the country by withdrawing.
She has revitalized the Democratic Party, raising more than half a billion dollars and erasing Trump’s lead in the polls.
However, Harris insists she remains the underdog and that the election will be won or lost in battleground states.
In the final days of Biden’s campaign, increasingly poor polls showed his only real remaining hope for victory was to win the three “Rust Belt” states of Pennsylvania, Michigan and Wisconsin.
Harris is now also targeting the four “Sun Belt” states of Georgia, Arizona, Nevada and North Carolina, as a way to give her multiple ways to win the popular vote in the Electoral College.
The Peach State is a particularly difficult target. Biden won the election by a razor-thin margin of less than 12,000 votes in 2020, a result Trump hotly disputed.
The Republican is now facing criminal charges in Georgia in connection with his alleged plot to overturn the vote.
On Wednesday, adding to her campaign, the latest Fox News poll shows Harris leading Trump in Georgia, 50 percent to 48 percent.
But Trump is also ramping up his swing state campaign as he tries to regain his footing after being upstaged by new standard-bearer Harris.
The vice president is not only twenty years younger than Trump and of black and South Asian descent, but is vying to become the first female American president.
Trump will attack Harris’ “dangerous liberal policies” in Michigan and Wisconsin on Thursday before traveling to Pennsylvania on Friday, the campaign said.
But his team was embroiled in controversy on Wednesday following a report that Trump’s entourage pushed and verbally abused staff during a politicized visit to the United States’ most sacred resting place for its war dead.
National Public Radio reported that the incident occurred when an Arlington National Cemetery official tried to prevent Trump aides from taking photos in a section for those killed in recent wars, where filming and staging of political events is prohibited.
(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)