MOON TOWNSHIP — President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris made a stop in Pittsburgh for a campaign event on Labor Day to advocate for workers’ rights in this historic union city.
Labor Day weekend is an important milestone in political campaigns, as it marks the beginning of the fall campaign season and the beginning of crunch time for the November elections. The Harris/Walz campaign is currently on the road, hitting major battleground states such as Pennsylvania and Michigan, but there were no Trump/Vance events over the holiday.
The event, held at the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers Local 5 Union Hall, opened with remarks from Biden, regarding Kamala Harris’ character and tenacity, along with the statement: “If you elect Kamala Harris, it will be the best decision you will ever make”.
During his presidency and Harris’ presidential campaign, Biden has claimed to be “the most pro-union administration” in U.S. history, and they both reinforced that point multiple times throughout the event. Biden and Harris both celebrated and endorsed union membership for workers, reiterated their efforts to ensure pensions for workers and to enact the bipartisan infrastructure bill, and their insistence that U.S. Steel – whose stockholders recently voted to be bought out by Japan-owned Nippon Steel – remains an American owned and operated enterprise.
In regard to the sale of U.S. Steel, Vice President Harris stated, “U.S. Steel is a historic American company… It is critical for our nation to maintain strong American steel companies. U.S. Steel should remain American-owned and American-operated”.
Energy was also a hot-button issue at the event, with Allegheny County Republican Caucus Chair Sam DeMarco blaming the sale of U.S. Steel on the Democrats since they “allied themselves with environmental extremists who devoted their time to destroying heavy industry here”.
Pennsylvania Governor Josh Shapiro, a Democrat who was a candidate to become Kamala Harris’ running mate before she eventually chose Minnesota Governor Tim Walz, made several statements regarding the Biden-Harris administration’s clean energy policy.
“Under President Biden’s leadership, this nation is producing more energy than ever before and we are leading the nation when it comes to clean energy development and putting people to work in the energy sector here in the commonwealth,” stated Governor Shapiro.
Harris, in her role as vice president, cast the deciding vote on a number of clean energy bills, including one to jump-start hydrogen energy production in both Eastern and Western PA.
Juxtaposing Biden and Harris’ policy on clean energy, Trump has been a strong ally of coal and natural gas energy and a strong opponent of climate change, which he has called a “hoax”, which has resonated with many miners and steelworkers across not only Pittsburgh but Appalachia at large.
In 2016, Trump won Pennsylvania by only 44,292 votes, which would be roughly 0.72% of the vote, the narrowest margin of victory in a state in nearly 200 years. In 2020, Biden won Pennsylvania by a wider, but still slim, 1.17%.
Currently, FiveThirtyEight.com has run 100 simulations of the upcoming Presidential Election, and they have Harris winning 53 of them, while Trump won 47.
Many political scientists say that the vote in Pennsylvania might be one of the closest in recent memory. When asked by University of Pennsylvania student Jane Carroll about his thoughts on the upcoming election, John Lapinski, Director of the Elections Unit at NBC News, said “This will be a super close election”.
“I am confident I will be working 100-plus hours at NBC News during election week to project who will be the next President of the United States,” Lapinski said.
“And I don’t know who that person is yet.”
