WASHINGTON: Donald Trump has so far watched from the sidelines as Vice President Kamala Harris galvanized and re-energized Democrats by stepping in to replace President Joe Biden as candidate. On Wednesday, Trump gets back in the game.
The Republican presidential nominee, is due to hold his first campaign rally since Harris emerged as his near-certain Democratic foe. The former president will appear at an event in Charlotte, North Carolina, a state that will be an important battleground in the Nov. 5 election.
The Trump campaign has insisted it is prepared for Harris’ candidacy, arguing she serves as a proxy for Biden on the economic and immigration policies that contributed to his sinking popularity with voters.
A Reuters/Ipsos poll completed on Tuesday showed Harris with a marginal two-percentage-point lead over Trump, 44% to 42%. Other recent national polls have shown Trump with an advantage.
Biden, who came back to Washington after isolating at his home in Delaware with COVID, will address the nation from the Oval Office on Wednesday night to explain his decision to drop out after a disastrous June debate with Trump raised questions about his ability to win the election, or to serve another four years if he succeeded.
On Tuesday, Trump took the unusual step of speaking to reporters on a conference call to underscore his campaign’s line of attack on the border, saying Harris was partially responsible for a record flow of migrants.
Biden put Harris in charge of working with countries in Central America to help stem the tide of migration, but she was not made responsible for border security.
“She’s a radical left person, and this country doesn’t want a radical left person to destroy it,” Trump said on the call. “She wants open borders. She wants things that nobody wants.” Harris has not called for the removal of border controls.
Harris campaign chair Jen O’Malley Dillon said in a memo made public on Wednesday that Democrats would aim to compete in the swing states of Michigan, Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, North Carolina, Georgia, Arizona and Nevada, opening up a map that in the final weeks of Biden’s campaign had appeared to be more focused on the Midwest.
“This race is more fluid now – the vice president is well-known but less well-known than both Trump and President Biden, particularly among Dem-leaning constituencies,” O’Malley Dillon wrote.
Harris heads to Indianapolis on Wednesday to speak at an event hosted by the Zeta Phi Beta Sorority, which was founded at Howard University, the historically Black college she attended. She hopes to tap sororities’ multi-generational network of Black women to deliver strong voter turnout for Democrats in November.
Harris held an energetic first rally as the likely nominee on Tuesday in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, which last week hosted the Republican National Convention. She assailed Trump and said he would take the nation “backward.
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