MILWAUKEE — With three weeks left in the presidential campaign, Democrat Kamala Harris spends most of her days trying to shore up support in the “blue wall” states of Pennsylvania, Michigan and Wisconsin, while trying to prevent a repeat of Hillary Clinton’s collapse there eight years ago.
The Vice President campaigned on a hockey rink Monday in Erie, Pennsylvania, where she denounced the Republican candidate Donald Trump as ‘unhinged’. She visited an art gallery in Detroit with actors Don Cheadle, Delroy Lindo and Cornelius Smith. Jr. on Tuesday then recorded a radio town hall with Charlemagne as God.
On Wednesday, Harris was back in Pennsylvania to emphasize loyalty to the Constitution while standing just steps from the banks of the Delaware River, where George Washington crossed with his troops at a crucial moment of the Revolutionary War.
Her pace doesn’t let up for the rest of the week. Harris is expected to hold three events in Wisconsin on Thursday, including a meet-and-greet with University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee students, and three more in Michigan on Friday. She will then campaign in Detroit on Saturday.
A loss anywhere in the “blue wall,” a name that reflects the region’s traditional Democratic leanings, could ruin Harris’ path to the presidency.
“You don’t take these conditions for granted. And she’s not,” said Joel Benenson, a Democratic pollster.
He previously served as chief strategist for Clinton, whose campaign was so overconfident that the country stopped conducting its own polls in Midwest battlegrounds as the election approached.
“We learned a painful lesson in 2016 when we didn’t go to the blue wall states and lost,” Benenson said.
Harris’ campaign emphasized that she is not giving up on Sun Belt battleground states such as North Carolina, Georgia, Arizona and Nevada. The vice president was in North Carolina this weekend and is expected to be back in Georgia on Sunday.
But any candidate’s most precious resource is time, and Harris’ schedule reflects the consensus on her most likely chance to win the White House.
“It’s not the only path, but it is the easiest path to victory,” said Democratic pollster Celinda Lake.
She added, “If you can’t win Pennsylvania or Michigan, do you really think you can win Georgia or North Carolina?”
Pennsylvania and Michigan have been Harris’s most popular destinations since Labor Day, with eight stops in each state, according to an Associated Press record of the candidates’ public events.
At the Harris event at Washington Crossing on Wednesday, one voter said Democrats had discovered the costs of complacency the hard way.
“In 2016, we thought we had it, you know, we thought we were doing well,” said Melanie Woods, a retired school principal who came all the way from Brooklyn. “And I don’t think you can ever take anything for granted. no more.”
Dan Kanninen, director of the Harris campaign’s battleground states, said the vice president has “multiple paths” to winning.
“All seven battlegrounds are in play, and we know they will all be incredibly close,” he said. “That’s why we will continue to aggressively engage and mobilize voters in all these states until Election Day.”
During her campaign travels, Harris is trying to choose strategic areas to talk about important policies, such as promoting auto jobs and unionization in Detroit and going to Douglas, Arizona to unveil plans to tighten rules for immigrants seeking asylum at the US-Mexico border. after walking past the towering wall that separated the two countries.
The campaign is also increasingly relying on large organizational networks in key states, including coordinated offices with state Democratic parties, to fill the gaps in Harris’s absence. It deploys key surrogates — most notably Harris’ running mate, Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz — to reduce the impact of choosing to travel to one part of the country over another.
Democrats have other advantages too. There are a host of prominent politicians who are backing Harris, including former President Barack Obama, who quit campaigning on her behalf. And there is a campaign war chest bigger than Trump’s, allowing Harris to keep up the pressure with advertising and expanded get-out-the-vote efforts.
The Democrats’ electoral opportunities have ebbed and flowed during this tumultuous election year. President Joe Biden faced a shrinking path to re-election, with some purple states falling out of reach. But when he dropped out of the race in July, Harris’ team highlighted her potentially broader geographic appeal.
“Vice President Harris is in a tight race, but it’s clear she can bring together a coalition of voters to keep a wide range of states in play,” campaign chair Jen O’Malley Dillon wrote in a late July memo.
But that doesn’t mean some states aren’t more important than others.
“You win Pennsylvania and you’re the next president,” Sen. John Fetterman said at Harris’ rally in Erie.
Trump’s travel this week is less tightly focused than Harris’s. He was in Pennsylvania on Monday, Illinois and Georgia on Tuesday and Florida on Wednesday.
He lives the Al Smith charity dinner Thursday in New York and back to Detroit on Friday
His previous visit there caused backlash because he criticized the citythat is recovering after years of financial problems.
“Our whole country will end up looking like Detroit if she is your president,” Trump said during a speech to the Detroit Economic Club.
Tommey Walker, founder and owner of the clothing company Detroit vs. Everybody, mocked Trump for bringing his city into disrepute as he introduced Harris at an event on Tuesday.
“Now it’s Detroit versus Donald Trump,” Walker proclaimed.
Harris, on the other hand, spoke of the city in a reverent tone. She recalled making friends with students from Detroit while attending Howard University.
“I just feel a kindred spirit when I come to Detroit,” Harris said.
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Associated Press video journalist Tassanee Vejpongsa in Washington Crossing, Pennsylvania, contributed to this report.