PHILADELPHIA — Vice President Kamala Harris sought to portray herself as the underdog against former President Donald Trump with a policy-light address at an election eve rally on the steps of the Philadelphia Museum of Art, made famous by Sylvester Stallone’s Rocky, in which she tried to bring back her good vibes from the summer.
“It’s good to be back in the City of Brotherly Love, where the foundation of our democracy was forged, and here at these famous steps, a tribute to those who start as the underdog and climb to victory,” Harris told a crowd of 30,000 people on Monday.
The return to presenting herself as the underdog comes after she dropped the descriptor from her stump speech in mid-October, replacing it instead with her insistence that “we will win.”
Harris continued to convey confidence on Monday as polls prepare to open around the country on Election Day, repeating that “momentum is on our side.”
“The race ain’t over yet and we must finish strong. This could be one of the closest races in history. Every single vote matters,” she said before the audience corrected her when she announced the wrong time that polling locations open.
Against the background of the iconic Pennsylvania landmark, Harris used the rally, organized simultaneously with events in the six other battleground states for one national livestream online, to urge her supporters to vote for her on Tuesday and turn the page on Trump without saying his name. Harris stopping calling Trump by his name last weekend after using her Ellipse remarks to criticize him as a “petty tyrant” and amplifying former White House chief of staff John Kelly’s statement that the former president fits within the definition of a fascist.
“We have an opportunity in this election to finally turn the page on a decade of politics that has been driven by fear and division,” she said. “We are done with that. We’re done. We’re exhausted with it.”
Harris’s address did not mention immigration, which polls suggest is one of voters’s top concerns, but she did mention the economy, healthcare, and the importance of “joy.”
“We started this campaign 107 days ago, and from the beginning, ours has not been a fight against something,” Harris said. “It has been a fight for something, a fight for a future with freedom, with opportunity, and with dignity for all Americans.”
“Our campaign has brought together people from all corners of this nation and from all walks of life,
united by our love for our country and our faith in a brighter, stronger, and more hopeful future that we will build together,” she added. “We finish as we started, with optimism, with energy, with joy, knowing that we, the people, have the power to shape our future and that we can confront any challenge we face when we do it together.”
The Philadelphia rally, punctuated with appearances by Lady Gaga, Oprah Winfrey, and Ricky Martin, in addition to a surprise performance by will.i.am of his new song “Yes She Can,” capped Harris’s last day on the campaign trail, one spent entirely in Pennsylvania, and her historic bid, only three-and-a-half months old.
“For more than half of this country’s life, women didn’t have a voice yet,” Lady Gaga said. “We raised children. We held our families together. We supported men as they made the decisions. But tomorrow, women will be a part of making this decision.”
Winfrey appealed to first-time voters, most of them young people, bringing 10 on stage with her before warning: “If we don’t show up tomorrow, it is entirely possible that we will not have the opportunity to ever cast a ballot again.”
Other headliners at the rallies around the country included Katy Perry in Pittsburgh, Bon Jovi in Detroit, and Christina Aguilera in Las Vegas.
As Harris sought to portray herself as the underdog, the rallies also attempted to recapture the good vibes that propelled her campaign this summer, shortly after President Joe Biden suspended his reelection bid in response to Democratic pressure following his debate with Trump, in the hope of a boost of last-minute enthusiasm heading into Election Day. The campaign spun the rallies as one of the largest interconnected get-out-the-vote events in political history, with special guest seats provided to every person who completed a phone-banking or door-knocking shift. Harris’s vibes were punctured by a Trump resurgence earlier in the fall.
Pennsylvania’s 19 Electoral College votes could decide the 2024 election, with Harris and Trump averaging within the margin of error in it and the other swing states, according to RealClearPolitics.
The Philadelphia downtown area was inundated with Harris supporters, some waiting more than four hours to enter the secured zone. “Fly Harris Fly” was projected on billboards around the art museum. “Fly Eagle Fly” is a catchphrase of the city’s NFL team, the Philadelphia Eagles.
The crowd grew restless during breaks in the program amid technical glitches, chanting “Philly” and shouting for Harris to speak to them already at one point. People also left as Lady Gaga closed out the show.
Earlier Monday, Harris attended a canvass kick-off in Scranton, Pennsylvania, before staff and volunteers knocked on their last doors. The vice president was then in Allentown, Pennsylvania, for a rally with Fat Joe, during which the rapper asked the majority-Latino community where is its “dignity” after Trump’s Madison Square Garden event last weekend, at which one speaker made a joke about Puerto Rico being a “floating island of garbage.” Almost 500,000 Pennsylvania residents are of Puerto Rican descent.
Harris visited a Puerto Rican small business in Reading, Pennsylvania, with popular Gov. Josh Shapiro (D-PA), who she considered as a running mate before choosing Gov. Tim Walz (D-MN), and Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) as well, before knocking on doors herself.
Trump counterprogrammed with his own rally in Pittsburgh before another event in Grand Rapids, Michigan, at the same venue where he held his last stops in 2016 and 2020. Earlier Monday, the former president was in Raleigh, North Carolina, and Reading too.
In Pittsburgh, Trump similarly underscored the significance of Pennsylvania, contending if he wins the Keystone State, he wins “the whole thing.” Despite advisers encouraging him to stay on message, Trump has remained his free-wheeling self in the closing days of his campaign, seeming to perform a sex act on a microphone and indicating he would not mind if an assassin aimed at him through the news media that cover his rallies.
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This summer, shortly before the Republican National Convention and Biden bowed out of the race, Trump was almost killed an hour away in Butler, Pennsylvania. There, “an assassin tried to stop our movement,” the former president told the crowd on Monday.
“That brush with death did not stop us — it only made us more determined to finish the job,” he said. “Many people say that God saved me in order to save America, many, many people are saying it, and with your help, we will fulfill that extraordinary mission together.”
