Clinton had a notable affinity with black voters and was even dubbed “the first black president” by the late black writer Toni Morrison, though she later said the moniker had been misunderstood.
He did not discuss matters of race at the event, instead opting to take three major concerns for all voters – price gouging, housing and energy policy – and compare the candidates’ policy positions, or what he portrayed as a lack thereof from Trump.
Former president Bill Clinton meets with supporters at a campaign event for Kamala Harris in Phoenix.Credit: AP
That is the approach Democrats are taking to convince undecided voters in the latter days of this campaign: that, as Harris said, Trump has an “enemies list”, while she has a “to-do list”. He will assign blame for problems, she will fix them.
But Clinton warned Harris was “extremely vulnerable, more vulnerable than she deserves to be, to crazy attacks”, and that for most undecided voters or people who didn’t follow politics, “what they think of her largely depends on what they think of President Biden”.
The 78-year-old Clinton was a little slow and strained early on, fumbling some words, but hit his stride at the end of his half hour on stage as he touched upon the Democrats’ theme of the day: Trump’s dictatorial approach to governing.
“He’s really good at some things. He was a very good golfer. Genuinely good,” Clinton said. “But when it comes to politics, he believes good politics is total domination. That’s what he thinks is good … he thought he was just supposed to tell people what to do, and they’d say, ‘yes’.”
Channell Powe, a local Democratic community organiser in Phoenix, said racism and sexism were to blame for the election going down to the wire.Credit: Michael Koziol
Harris and the Democrats seized on comments from Trump’s longest-serving chief-of-staff John Kelly, a retired four-star general, who claimed the Republican wanted generals who were as obedient as Adolf Hitler’s, and on multiple occasions had said Hitler “did some good things too”. Trump responded by calling Kelly a “lowlife” and “total degenerate”.
Kelly’s comments, reported in multiple interviews, led Harris to agree Trump was a fascist at a CNN town hall-style event – the first time she has publicly described him thus.
Many Australians looking at the US election from afar might wonder: Given Trump’s extreme rhetoric over a long period, his disregard for the country’s institutions and his penchant for authoritarianism, why is the race still so close?
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Channell Powe, a Democratic community organiser and ex-school board member at the Clinton event, offered one answer. “A lot of it is racism, unfortunately, and sexism. You have a clear distinction between two candidates. One is on a path forward to uniting Americans, and the other is on a divisive path to dictatorship,” she said.
But some people were vulnerable to a deluge of misinformation, disinformation and “flat out lies”, she said, to the point of voting against their own interests.
In the lead-up to the US election we will be sending a special Harris v Trump edition of our What in the World newsletter every Tuesday. Below is an excerpt. Sign up to get the whole newsletter delivered to your inbox.
