Democratic Presidential nominee Kamala Harris met with union workers in Michigan — a battleground state — on Labor Day and also, along with President Joe Biden, spoke at a union event in Pittsburgh, with Pennsylvania being another state with the power to decide the election in November.
Harris’s campaign emphasized her Labor Day schedule as proof of her — and the Democratic Party’s — commitment to labor unions and working class voters, portraying the Democrat’s schedule in opposition to her GOP rival Donald Trump‘s Labor Day itinerary, which included no big campaign events.
Happy Labor Day, @realDonaldTrump pic.twitter.com/K0BMhDmNJA
— Kamala HQ (@KamalaHQ) September 2, 2024
[NOTE: Respective VP nominees Tim Walz and J.D. Vance also hit the bricks on the labor-themed holiday, with divergent results.]
Harris made her pitch to labor by noting what she said her campaign and working class people have in common — a recognition of the “beauty” of hard work, something those in the room, she said, all shared.
Vice President Harris: This will be a tight race until the very end. So let’s not pay too much attention to the polls. As labor knows best, we are running as the underdog, and we have some hard work ahead of us. But we like hard work. Hard work is good work pic.twitter.com/eFxcFyc8e1
— Kamala HQ (@KamalaHQ) September 2, 2024
On the stump, Harris skipped a word: she left out “important” or “consequential” or some synonym, calling November “the most election” — a tiny gaffe notable only because a similar mistake by Biden might have created headlines.
But moving swiftly into her core pitch, Harris told the crowd that her campaign, like unions throughout history, is the “underdog” — and that 2024 is going to be a tight election race “right up to the end.”
Harris then said: “We have some hard work up ahead of us. But here’s the beauty of us in this room. We like hard work. Hard work is good work.”
Following up, Harris said that her candidacy needed people “to knock on doors, to get people to the polls” for her campaign to have a chance. “Bluntly put,” she said, “because the people in here do it, to help us win Pennsylvania.”