Joe Biden will campaign alongside Kamala Harris for the first time on Monday since he stepped aside six weeks ago to allow the vice president to claim the presidential nomination after a poor performance at the debate.
The duo were due to appear together in Pittsburgh, in the key swing state of Pennsylvania, at a Labor Day event aimed at shore up support from unions, a key Democratic constituency and a steadfast supporter of Biden, who describes himself as “the most pro-union president in U.S. history.”
Harris is expected to take up that mantle with a pledge to oppose the sale of U.S. Steel — headquartered in Pittsburgh — to Japanese company Nippon. Biden has already voiced his opposition to the proposed sale.
Before her arrival in Pittsburgh, a Harris campaign aide said she would “say that U.S. Steel must remain domestically owned and operated and that she would always be committed to supporting American steelworkers.”
Harris’s pledges are among the few specific policy promises she has made since rising to the top spot on the Democratic ticket after Biden announced July 21 that he would abandon his re-election bid.
Biden has since endorsed Harris, and the two briefly appeared on stage together last month at the Democratic National Convention in Chicago.
While the president has been vacationing in California and at home in Delaware for the past two weeks, he is expected to campaign for Harris, focusing on swing states like Pennsylvania, Michigan and Wisconsin, with high concentrations of white, working-class voters whose loyalty could be crucial in November.
Harris has promised “a new path forward” while remaining loyal to Biden’s policies, walking a fine line between distancing herself from his administration’s perceived economic shortcomings — particularly on inflation — and clinging to its success stories.
The focus on Monday appeared to be on her continued support for Biden, who last September became the first president to take to the picket line when he joined striking auto workers in Michigan, another key state, in a show of support for the United Auto Workers (UAW) union.
Monday’s event is expected to be attended by local and national leaders of major labor unions, including the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers, the United Steelworkers and the AFL-CIO, the main U.S. labor body. Also expected to attend were Bob Casey, the Democratic senator from Pennsylvania who is running for re-election, and the state’s governor, Josh Shapiro, who Harris considered as her running mate before ultimately choosing Tim Walz.
Earlier, the vice president visited Michigan — also a union stronghold — for an event in Detroit, where she was joined by the governor, Gretchen Whitmer, and two other union leaders, Shawn Fain of the UAW and Randi Weingarten of the American Federation of Teachers.
Polls show Harris and Donald Trump neck and neck in both Pennsylvania and Michigan, despite a small but consistent lead over the Republican candidate in national surveys. Both states are considered part of the Democrats’ “blue wall,” along with Wisconsin. It is the results in these states, plus a small number of other swing states in the South and Southwest, rather than the national vote total, that is likely to determine the winner in November’s election under the U.S. state-by-state electoral college system.
Trump has also pitched union support, seeking the endorsement of the Teamsters union, whose head, Sean O’Brien, spoke at the Republican national convention in July. However, Trump’s running mate, J.D. Vance, was booed last week when he spoke at a conference of the International Association of Firefighters and claimed to be on “the most pro-labor Republican ticket in history.”
