Kamala Harris will head to the Rust Belt Monday to bolster her effort to win over white working class voters, a crucial chunk of the electorate that could swing her November election fight against former President Trump.
The Democratic presidential nominee will attend traditional Labor Day parades in Detroit and Pittsburgh alongside President Biden, a chance to make a play for a healthy share of a demographic that was once solidly Democratic but has shifted to the right in the Trump era.
With summer winding down and the fall campaign looming, the foray comes after the dizzying six weeks since Biden stepped down and endorsed Harris. The vice president launched her campaign with extraordinary success building enthusiasm among younger voters, women and people of color.
Harris has grabbed a narrow lead over Trump in polls, a rise mostly fueled by more support from those groups who had been lukewarm about Biden before he dropped out the race.
Now, analysts say Harris, who is seeking to become the first Black woman president, needs to shore up the blue collar backing that her boss may have had a better shot at winning over.
“She’ll deliver a message to working class she’s been sharpening,” said Basil Smikle, pointing to support from union leaders and Trump’s unpopularity with organized labor.
“She can point to Trump’s own antagonism towards labor exemplified by his remarks to Elon Musk on X, to make the case that he’s never been a friend to middle America,” he added.
John Anzalone, a top Democratic pollster, said Harris needs to tamp down Trump’s margins among white blue collar workers, especially in conservative rural areas and small towns in the Midwest.
“You may get your ass kicked, but it’s about getting your ass kicked by a smaller margin.” Anzalone told NBC News.
Jared Abbott, director of the Center for the Study of Working Class Politics, says Harris gets high marks for her early focus on populist attacks on Big Pharma and supermarket price gouging, as well as trumpeting Biden’s job growing policies.
“Still, her attacks on economic elites pale in comparison to what Trump or Bernie Sanders would (say),” Abbott said.
It’s no accident Harris chose cities in Michigan and Pennsylvania to make her pitch to the flannel shirt and hard hat crowd. Along with Wisconsin, the states make up the so-called blue wall bloc that provides the simplest path for her to win 270 electoral votes and take the White House.
One of the most remarkable shifts Harris has engineered since she launched her campaign has been to erase what had been a healthy lead for Trump in the diverse Sun Belt swing states of Arizona, Nevada, North Carolina and Georgia.
Harris has seen relatively smaller gains in the blue wall, where Biden’s support remained relatively strong before he quit the race.
The Harris campaign hopes vice presidential nominee Tim Walz can help her make the case to white voters in the heartland because of his upbringing in small-town Nebraska and his resume as a teacher and high school football coach.
Walz often boasts that he’s an enthusiastic hunter and gun owner, which could make him more palatable to cultural conservatives who might otherwise not consider voting for the Harris ticket.
Republicans strategists scoff at the idea Harris could make significant inroads within Trump’s base of working class support in the Rust Belt.
They point to Trump’s strong and durable support from white men without a college degree, an appeal some surveys say could spread to working class Black and Latino men. Recent polls show Trump leading Harris by nearly 20% among men as a whole, an impressive lead that is nevertheless smaller than her lead with women.
“Harris will have a very difficult time selling her record as VP and her vision as president and earning their trust,” said Matt Mackowiak, a Texas-based GOP strategist. “Trump already has their trust.”