The Democrat excites thousands in Pennsylvania, but as in almost all her events, she receives criticism for not stopping the genocide in Gaza
▲ Kamala Harris focuses her last days of the campaign on the key states to win the election, yesterday she was in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania.Photo Ap
▲ Protesters displayed a Palestinian flag and interrupted the candidate’s speech several times at her rally yesterday.Photo Ap
Jim Cason and David Brooks
Correspondents
La Jornada Newspaper
Thursday, October 31, 2024, p. 25
Harrisburg and New York. In Harrisburg, in the middle of Pennsylvania, Kamala Harris urged thousands of her supporters to continue knocking on doors to boost the vote in a state that she has to win to succeed in the national election, in an event held shortly after her opponent Donald Trump He headlined a rally a few miles away where he promised to end inflation, close the border and reduce taxes for almost everyone.
Just six days before the last votes are received in the presidential election, Pennsylvania is one of seven states that will determine the national result, and both campaigns are aware that the margin of victory in this entity could be as little as 50,000 votes. of the 7 million predicted to participate in this election.
Hours before Harris’ arrival, hundreds of his supporters gathered near the stage, wearing t-shirts to identify themselves as teachers by Kamala either unionists for Kamalaand others who declared their defense of women’s right to choose abortion. Cheerleaders and a Harrisburg High School band warmed up the crowd, which had been listening to a mix of music from a diyeiincluding what became a gay anthem, YMCAin the 70s; which is also touched upon, inexplicably, at the rallies of the ultra-reactionary Trump.
But it was the song Freedomby Beyonce, the one that announced the arrival of Harris, who took the stage in front of a large red blanket that read: when we vote, we win.
I visit you this afternoon because we need you, Pennsylvania, because we have six more days of the most consequential election in our historydeclared the Democratic candidate, which caused screams and thousands of phones taking video. Before cries of Ka-ma-la, Ka-ma-lacontinued: No one can sit on the sidelines, it’s time to knock on doors, send texts to friends and neighbors, talk to your families and colleagues at work. to urge them to go vote.
The loudest cries of approval responded when he said: Ours is a fight for freedom, like a woman’s freedom to choose…; However, his speech was interrupted four times by activists who demanded: stop the genocide in Gaza –something that is repeated in almost all of their actions–, drawing attention to the complicity of the government of Joe Biden and his vice president Harris in sending weapons to Israel. As she has done before, the candidate responded: I am the one speaking now. But he did add that, Unlike Trump, I don’t believe that people who disagree with me are the enemy within. He wants to imprison them, I’ll give them a seat at the table. But that may be after the election, since he has not done so so far with his critics about Israel, and it is worth remembering that he refused to allow any Palestinian-American representative to speak from the podium during the Democratic Convention, and he did not make any reference yesterday, nor the day before yesterday in his speech in Washington, to the genocide in Gaza.
Yesterday’s message in Pennsylvania focused on the economy; He promised to reduce the cost of living for majorities and repeated several economic promises, from reducing taxes for 100 million Americans, to offering assistance for child care, housing, small businesses and families caring for the elderly. Everyone has the right to health serviceshe stated.
His words before a mostly white and middle-class audience were well received, but it will only be known on election day if he managed to reach and convince the undecided people who will be key in this election.
Harris’s rally, one of three she held yesterday, which included stops in two other key states – Wisconsin and North Carolina – was a well-rehearsed event with the same disciplined speech designed to draw applause from supporters for a candidate who combines warnings about the threat that Trump represents to the democratic order with the promise of a future that benefits working American families – yesterday there was no mention of immigrants and their contributions to the economy.
Trump maintains the threatening speech
For his part, Trump held a rally in Allentown, Pennsylvania, on Tuesday night where, as always, the most notable thing was the absence of discipline, giving his audience a verbal tour of his own thought process, including, for example, how he decided to build a workout room with weights he never used, or an assessment of what his famous orange hair looked like in that setting.
Among those types of comments, Trump returned to his central themes, talking about how his threats to impose tariffs on cars manufactured abroad had led an auto company to cancel plans to build another factory in Mexico (he did not mention the company by name ). While Harris focused on abortion rights, Trump always returns to the threats facing the country: immigrants, Marxist radical leftand measures to accommodate transgender people (including in the past the obvious lie that they operate on children in schools so that they come back with another sex).
The United States is a country under occupation; Criminals and those taken from asylums are crossing across our bordersTrump accused before showing a video of a woman whose daughter was murdered by two Venezuelan immigrants, whom his opponent Harris maintained had allowed to enter that country to await consideration of their asylum applications.
The former president knows how to entertain – that’s what he became famous for in his reality show The Apprentice– and knows his audience in depth. Throughout his speeches, he points to people in the audience (often attractive women, despite being accused of sexual abuse including rape) to thank them for their support and occasionally invites local politicians to the podium to offer him praise, although he cannot tolerate sharing the spotlight for long.
The emphasis Tuesday was on Latinos, as Republicans sought to stem the damage from a comedian’s joke at Trump’s New York rally on Sunday, when he said Puerto Rico was a garbage island. Puerto Ricans are the majority of Latinos in Pennsylvania and the Trump campaign sought to distance itself from the comedian, while the candidate said he did not even know him.
They invited Florida Cuban-American Senator Marco Rubio and a Puerto Rican political figure to the rally in Pennsylvania as part of the damage control effort.
The former president spoke of the country that he seeks to rescue from the hands of the Democrats, and offered some of his political recipes that range from sealing the border to stopping inflation and recovering lost jobs, those that went to other countries. The focus is always on the candidate as a star, to such a degree that he almost forgot the purpose of his act. By the way, you should go out and vote.he reminded them, otherwise I will be ashamed.
