As US president Joe Biden recuperates from Covid-19, vice-president Kamala Harris has become the standard bearer of their reelection effort, visiting the battleground states of Michigan and North Carolina this past week before headlining a well-attended fundraiser in Massachusetts on Saturday.
Harris has assumed the starring role at a time when a growing number of Democratic elected officials are pushing for her to become the party’s nominee. Both voters and donors say they have grown dissatisfied with the president, and the campaign’s fundraising efforts have sputtered.
With Saturday’s fundraiser Harris sought to juice those flagging numbers, turning to one of the Democrats’ most reliable sources of support, the LGBTQ+ community. She told a crowd of roughly 1,000 people gathered in Provincetown, Massachusetts, that the race against former president Donald Trump constituted an existential threat to gay and transgender Americans.
“I know it to be a fundamental fight for freedom,” Harris said, speaking in a spacious oceanside tent in Provincetown, a resort community in Cape Cod that is seen as a centre of gay life in the United States. “The freedom to love who you love and to be who you are, openly and with pride. The freedom to be free from discrimination and bigotry and hate. The freedom to simply be.”
The fundraiser pulled in more than $2 million, twice the initial estimate, organisers said.
Harris has lately been thrust into an awkward position: remaining loyal to Biden while demonstrating that she is ready to take over the top of the ticket if that need arises. On Friday, she joined a call with Democratic donors that seemed to offer them little reassurance. The Biden campaign’s fundraising from big donors is said to have plummeted this month.
Biden is recovering well from the virus at his vacation home in Delaware, his doctor said in a letter released by the White House on Saturday. He is expected to resume campaigning this next week, according to his aides.
Harris did not mention Biden’s political or physical woes at the fundraiser, calling him “one of the most consequential presidents in American history” and condemning Trump’s record on LGBTQ+ issues during his time in the White House. She was sometimes interrupted with shouts of “we love you” and “go get ’em, Kamala”.
Democrats have been divided about whether to hold an open convention if Biden withdraws from the race. Black and Hispanic elected officials and party activists have especially pushed for Harris as Biden’s natural successor. The Trump campaign has also been preparing plans for attacks to wield against her.
On Saturday senator Elizabeth Warren, an ally of Biden’s, suggested on MSNBC that Democrats should not leapfrog Harris for another candidate. “What gives me a lot of hope right now is that if President Biden decides to step back we have Vice-President Kamala Harris, who is ready to step up to unite the party.”
Mark Takano, who pulled his support from Biden in a statement on Saturday, was even more explicit. “It’s time to pass the torch to Kamala,” Takano wrote.
This article originally appeared in The New York Times.
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