Kamala Harris appeared with Barack Obama for the first time on the campaign trail, offering closing arguments targeting Black voters in Atlanta’s eastern suburbs, a vibrant, symbolic part of Georgia.
“Ours is a fight for the future,” the US vice-president said at the rally in Clarkston. She touched on familiar themes – reducing the costs of drugs, housing and groceries. “I come from the middle class, and I will never forget where I come from.”
Harris said she believed “healthcare should be a right and not just a privilege for those who can afford it”, and said Trump would gut the Affordable Care Act and roll back the $35 cap on insulin.
The Democratic nominee also reaffirmed her support for abortion rights, referring to the death of Amber Nicole Thurman, a Georgia woman whose death was recently found to be a result of the state’s abortion ban. Harris said: “Donald Trump still refuses to acknowledge the pain and suffering he has caused … women are being denied care during miscarriages.”
Pollsters and commentators have suggested that the Harris campaign has been losing support among Black male voters. That assertion does not have much credence among Democratic activists, who say conservatives are exaggerating polling anomalies for political effect.
“I do not believe that significant numbers are going to vote for the likes of Donald Trump,” said the Rev Raphael Warnock, the Democratic Georgia senator, recounting Trump’s history of racial discrimination and public acts of bigotry. He said: “We are not a monolith. There will be some … but we know who Donald Trump. We are not confused.”
Nonetheless, the Harris campaign has more closely targeted its messaging to Black voters in the closing days. Harris has said she rejects the idea that her ethnicity entitles her to Black votes.
Obama directed his ire at Trump, excoriating him for his failures in the pandemic, his general incompetence and for – in the words of Trump’s former military staff – wishing his general officers were more like Hitler’s.
Trump’s erratic behavior has “become so common that people no longer take it seriously. Just because he acts goofy doesn’t mean his presidency wouldn’t be dangerous.”
The campaign has turned up the wattage on Black star power in its closing days, bringing the actor Samuel L Jackson and the directors Spike Lee and Tyler Perry to warm up the crowd.
“This is where I found the American dream for itself,” Perry said, speaking about how Atlanta supported his rise from poverty to success. He spent time in homelessness, trying to scrape enough money to stay in extended stay hotels on Buford Highway, only a few miles from the stadium.
Perry, now a multimillionaire, owns much of the former Fort McPherson, which he noted was once a Confederate army base. “We are all shapes, sizes and colors. But we are one.”
Bruce Springsteen also performed an acoustic set of Promised Land, Land of Hopes and Dreams and Dancing in the Dark before Obama and Harris spoke.
“Donald Trump is running to be an American tyrant,” Springsteen said.
The city of Clarkston has often been called the most diverse square mile in America. As a central location for refugee resettlement, it is common to see women from Iraq wearing an abaya walking to the store next to Nepalese immigrants, while children from Haiti and Somalia buy a Coke at the gas station up the street from James R Hallford Stadium, where the rally filled its 15,000-seat capacity. The Harris campaign said 20,000 people were in attendance.
“Fifty different countries are represented here among the people of this district. Those are hard-working people. They’re our brothers and sisters,” said the congressman Hank Johnson, who represents the city. “They are who we are. They are part of the fabric of America.”
Though Clarkston has been going through a historic revitalization over the last few years, this area of DeKalb county continues to fight for economic growth. Pockets of first and second-decile poverty surround the city. Memorial Drive, once a thriving business district, is the effective dividing line between north DeKalb county’s thriving multiracial cities and the majority-Black, economically challenged southern half of the county.
“The demographic of Clarkston matters,” said Jacquelyn Smith, a Clarkston resident at the rally. “I saw little Black girls walking here who will never see something like this again.”
Smith spoke of parking on Robert E Lee Boulevard in Stone Mountain on her way to the rally, named for the Confederate general and memorialized at the Stone Mountain park, the largest Confederate monument remaining in America. She said: “We have come such a long way.”
About 584,000 Georgians are naturalized citizens, the largest proportionately among the eight swing states. About one in six Georgians in metro Atlanta were born outside the United States. Naturalized citizens tend to have lower voter turnout, and turnout will determine the election in Georgia.
Early voting has been setting records in Georgia in a historic shift, with almost a third of Georgians having already cast a ballot. Some counties have already crossed the 50% voter turnout threshold. The Harris campaign has sent text messages pointedly asking every supporter in the state to volunteer two hours for door knocking or phone banking.
“This man is no good bad news and it’s up to us to stop him,” said the senator Jon Ossoff, who, with others, referred to the sacrifices of late, iconic congressman John Lewis as a call to action today. “John Lewis bled on that bridge so we could rise to this moment,” he said.
