Harris on battleground bus tour ahead of Democratic convention

Chicago, United States – AFP

Kamala Harris embarked on a bus tour of the potentially election-deciding state of Pennsylvania on Sunday, as she keeps up the momentum before her star turn at the Democratic National Convention in Chicago.

The US vice president has reenergized the party after an astonishing month that has seen her replace President Joe Biden at the top of the ticket and wipe out Republican rival Donald Trump’s lead in the polls.

Harris and her running mate Tim Walz, accompanied by their spouses, arrived at an airport hangar in Pittsburgh and greeted supporters, before setting off on a bus emblazoned with their names to a series of small towns to woo blue-collar voters.

Visiting a campaign phone bank later in Rochester, Pennsylvania, a crowd chanted “We are not going back” — Harris’s signature line as America’s first female, Black and South Asian vice president casts herself as a new generation of leader.

The two campaigns are focusing heavily on Pennsylvania, in the heart of America’s rust belt, which Trump won in 2016 before Biden seized it in 2020.

– ‘We are ready’ –

A Washington Post-ABC-Ipsos survey published Sunday showed Harris with a narrow lead over Trump among registered voters across the country, where one month ago it had Trump and Biden in a dead heat.

Security has been ramped up for the four-day Chicago convention, with tens of thousands of protesters expected to rally every day against the Biden-Harris administration’s support for Israel’s war on Gaza.

“We are ready,” Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson told ABC on Sunday, adding that his police force was working with the Secret Service and other agencies to ensure a “safe, peaceful, yet vibrant” convention.

Illinois Governor J.B. Pritzker said the planned protests would be allowed as long as they remained peaceful.

“If there are troublemakers, they are going to get arrested and they are going to get convicted,” he told CNN.