Two weeks before the American presidential election, in a campaign with a more virulent tone every day, Kamala Harris redoubled her efforts on Monday to seduce moderate conservatives at a time when the dynamic seemed to be turning slightly in favor of her Republican rival.
The vice-president is making a whirlwind tour of three key states in the east of the country – Pennsylvania, Michigan and Wisconsin – in the company of former Republican parliamentarian Liz Cheney, a fierce opponent of Donald Trump.
For his part, the former president is in North Carolina (southeast), another key state in the election, hard hit by a hurricane at the end of September and where his supporters are spreading false information about government aid.
The target of the day for Kamala Harris: residential suburbs of Pennsylvania, Michigan and Wisconsin, and more particularly those where the former United States ambassador to the UN, Nikki Haley, had managed to take votes in the former president during the Republican primary.
In Malvern (Pennsylvania), speaking of her desire to “turn the page”, she estimated that Mr. Trump’s domination of American politics since his surprise election in 2016 had led Americans to “turn on each other ” and had “exhausted” the country.
And she warned voters: “In many ways, he is an unserious man. But (if he is elected), the consequences will be extremely serious.”
An argument supported by Liz Cheney who explained that her support for the vice-president had not been a “difficult choice to make” as a political leader but also “as a mother”. “I know how quickly democracies can collapse,” she said.
“My opponent has made a point of admiring dictators and autocrats around the world,” Kamala Harris continued. “If Donald Trump were president, Vladimir Putin would be sitting in kyiv.”
A billion dollars
The Democrats are throwing all their strength into the battle to support their candidate who has been in the running for only three months against Donald Trump who has been in the campaign for two years. According to official figures released Monday, Kamala Harris’ campaign team spent $270 million in September compared to only $78 million for the Trump camp.
And the vice-president, 60 years old as of Sunday, has collected more than a billion dollars since entering the campaign in July, after the withdrawal of President Joe Biden, according to the New York Times, unheard of for a quarter countryside.
But this financial advantage struggles to translate into electoral capital. If we are to believe the polls, the two candidates remain neck and neck but some recent surveys seem to show a slight advantage, although still within the margin of error, in favor of Donald Trump.
Xenophobic rhetoric
The Republican candidate, 78, said Monday that the Democrat was not “qualified to run”, even believing that she was “a threat to democracy”. “It’s hard to believe there are undecided voters,” he added.
From Greenville, North Carolina, he again focused on the issue of immigration, “problem number 1”, “even ahead of the economy” according to him.
Giving free rein to his xenophobic rhetoric, he promised that with his victory “the invasion of migrants will end and the restoration of the country will begin.”
“I will save every American city that has been invaded and conquered, and we will put these vicious, bloodthirsty criminals in prison or expel them from our country,” he said.
Verbal violence
Earlier, speaking from Swannanoa, a small town ravaged by Hurricane Helen, Donald Trump repeated his false accusations that the federal natural disaster response agency had spent its funds “on illegal migrants.”
On site, “everything still looks like a war zone, I don’t have a better word to describe” the situation, Shelley Hughes, a local resident who supports the Republican, told AFP on Friday.
The second deadliest hurricane to hit the continental United States in more than half a century, Helene killed at least 240 people in the southeast of the country, including at least 124 in North Carolina.
In recent days, the Republican candidate has also stepped up his verbal violence against his rival. “You need to tell Kamala Harris that you’ve had enough. (…) You’re a shitty vice-president, the worst, you’re fired. Get out of here,” he told his supporters on Saturday .
The vice-president also toughened her tone against Donald Trump, whose behavior she believes “debases” the presidential office.
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