DURHAM, N.C. \u2014 Former President Bill Clinton campaigned for the first time alongside the Democratic ticket Thursday, appearing with Gov. Tim Walz and reprising his role as \u201cexplainer in chief\u201d to make the case to North Carolinians to elect Kamala Harris on the first day of early voting here.<\/p>\n
\u201cI don\u2019t know how many more elections I\u2019ll be involved with. And I\u2019m too old to gild the lily. Heck, I\u2019m only two months younger than Donald Trump. But, good news for you is I will not spend 30 minutes swaying back and forth for you,\u2019 Clinton told cheering supporters in a gymnasium at a community recreation center. \u201cI will not clap off beat. Nor will I pretend to be a conductor, because we got a race to win. And we have to win it. I\u2019ve been doing this a long, long time, and I can honestly say that this time I am not here running for anything anymore except for my grandchildren\u2019s future.\u2019<\/p>\n
Clinton appeared with Walz as part of a multi-state tour by the former president targeted at mobilizing rural and Black voters. Democrats are spending the final weeks of the race looking to blunt the GOP\u2019s dominance with rural voters and shore up their own advantage with Black voters as polls show Trump has made slight \u2014 but meaningful \u2014 gains with them. Walz also has been on a multi-day campaign swing through rural parts of the swing states, touting his own background and connection to places where Democrats have ceded political ground to Republicans over the years.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhen I volunteered to help Kamala Harris and Tim Walz, I told them, I said, \u2018Send somebody else to the big places, somebody that needs the TV coverage,\u2019 \u2018 Clinton said Sunday at a Harris campaign office in Albany, Ga. \u201cI said, \u2018Send me to the country. I know where I belong.\u2019 \u201d<\/p>\n
Walz introduced Clinton Thursday as \u201ca son of the South,\u201d noting Clinton\u2019s upbringing in Arkansas. While Walz delivered his stump speech, Clinton watched seated on stage \u2014 at times with his chin in his hands, at times leaning back in a grin as Walz criticized Trump.<\/p>\n
\u201cI could have sat here for another hour listen to him talk because he reminds me of home,\u201d Clinton said of the Minnesota governor.<\/p>\n
Wesley Harris (D), a North Carolina state representative running for state treasurer, said Clinton was the \u201cperfect messenger to be able to go into these parts.\u201d While Biden-Harris policies have improved the economy on the \u201cmacro level,\u201d Harris said, some rural voters still feel left behind.<\/p>\n
\u201cThey just want someone to understand what they\u2019re going through,\u2019 Harris said, calling it the party\u2019s \u201cbiggest disconnect\u2019 as it reaches out beyond the big cities. \u2018I think the biggest economic message we need is empathy.\u201d<\/p>\n
Clinton dedicated much of his remarks to acknowledging concerns voters have about the economy, and explaining the conditions that led to the current rate of inflation. Democrats have long valued Clinton for his ability to speak about economic issues with simplicity and compassion. Former president Barack Obama memorably deemed Clinton the \u201cexplainer in chief.\u2019<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s unfair to pretend that we could have been the only country in the world that would have escaped this inflation problem, and [Harris is] actually trying to do something about it,\u201d he noted, directly addressing one of Democrats\u2019 top vulnerabilities with voters.<\/p>\n
He touted his credentials (\u201cI know a little something about this. I did have that job for eight years\u201d) and acknowledged inflation is a problem for Democrats (\u201cWhy aren\u2019t we voting for the Democrats? A lot of people say, well, there\u2019s been too much inflation. That\u2019s right\u2019), before walking supporters through what he described as the contributing factors.<\/p>\n
He ticked through covid\u2019s impact on the supply chain, the basics of supply and demand, and Biden and Harris\u2019s work to lower inflation, drawing applause when he said the Federal Reserve has lowered interest rates. \u201cThere\u2019s still some residual inflation that we all have questions about, especially in food prices and fuel prices,\u201d he acknowledged.<\/p>\n
Attendees expressed optimism that Clinton will be able to reach rural voters in their state in part due to his economic messaging.<\/p>\n
\u201cHe was a wonderful president, and I think he\u2019s also someone who brings the south vote out being a Southerner himself,\u201d said Helen Wolstenholme, 64, from Cary, N.C. \u201cI think in eastern North Carolina that\u2019s particularly important.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cHe connects well to rural communities,\u2019 added her son, Xan Wolstenholme-Britt, 24, a student at Duke Law School. \u2018He speaks normally and people, people connect with him that way, so I think he\u2019s a good surrogate to have to send into rural communities like they\u2019re doing.\u201d<\/p>\n
Walz has also leaned into his rural background since joining the ticket. Speaking at a soybean farm in Volant, Penn., on Tuesday, he rolled out his and Harris\u2019s plan for rural communities and touted his childhood in rural Nebraska, background as a hunter, and experience working on the farm bill as a member of Congress representing a rural district.<\/p>\n
\u201cI promise you this, Vice President Harris and I, when we win this election, we will have rural Americans back just like they\u2019ve had our back,\u201d Walz said to cheers, clad in a camo baseball cap and red and black plaid flannel.<\/p>\n
Clinton spoke at the Democratic National Convention in August but has otherwise kept a low profile in the campaign until recently. Democrats have contemplated how much to embrace him as a campaign surrogate following the #MeToo movement that started in 2017, casting a harsher light on the sexual misconduct allegations that he faced at the height of his political career.<\/p>\n
He was largely welcomed warmly by the crowd Thursday, but some younger attendees expressed skepticism about his return to the trail.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019m not excited about him,\u201d said attendee Rebecca May, 27, who is planning to vote for Harris but said she preferred her more progressive campaign positions in 2020.<\/p>\n
\u201cI think that they need the younger vote to win this election. I think young people care about things like Monica Lewinsky, about the #MeToo movement, I think people \u2014 young people \u2014 don\u2019t care for Bill Clinton,\u201d May added.<\/p>\n
Clinton campaigned for Harris on Sunday and Monday in Georgia, a battleground state with particular importance to the former president. He was the last Democratic presidential candidate to carry the state \u2014 in 1992 \u2014 before Biden flipped it four years ago.<\/p>\n
In Georgia, Clinton focused on retail campaigning over large-scale events. He visited churches, McDonald\u2019s and a fish fry, sporting a camouflage Harris-Walz baseball cap.<\/p>\n
Among the smaller cities that Clinton visited was Albany in southwestern Georgia, a predominantly Black community in a heavily Democratic county. It was also a key site in the civil rights movement, giving birth to the Albany Movement against desegregation across the region in 1961.<\/p>\n
Rep. Sanford Bishop, a Democrat who represents southwest Georgia, said Clinton\u2019s visit was \u201cvery, very effective,\u2019 proving Harris\u2019s commitment to rural America and especially resonating with older voters who remember his presidency.<\/p>\n
\u201c[Clinton] struck gold with people who were listening and who have those nostalgic favorable feelings for Clinton and for the Clinton legacy,\u201d Bishop said.<\/p>\n
Clinton will also visit more politically divided territory. He is set to attend a get-out-the-vote event Sunday with Democrats in Nash County, N.C., which Biden won by just 120 votes four years ago.<\/p>\n
Early voting began in North Carolina on Thursday and by mid-afternoon, with 81 of the 100 counties reporting, 209,644 ballots had been cast, according to data released by the state board of elections. With hours left to vote, the state blew past previous year totals for the first day of early voting other than the 2020 presidential election when 348, 599 voted on the first day.<\/p>\n
The state is expected to release the day\u2019s final tally on Friday morning. Voting persisted despite the widespread destruction from Hurricane Helene last month. Across the 25 counties declared federal disaster areas, the state was able to open 76 polling places, just four less than the 80 they\u2019d planned to have.<\/p>\n
Colby Itkowitz contributed to this report.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
DURHAM, N.C. \u2014 Former President Bill Clinton campaigned for the first time alongside the Democratic ticket Thursday, appearing with Gov. Tim Walz and reprising his role as \u201cexplainer in chief\u201d to make the case to North Carolinians to elect Kamala Harris on the first day of early voting here. \u201cI don\u2019t know how many more […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":0,"featured_media":11284,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-11283","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-politics"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11283","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=11283"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11283\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/11284"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=11283"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=11283"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=11283"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}