In Greenville, Harris vows to work for all Americans and warns of a ‘Trump with no guardrails’ 

Harris mixed warnings about Trump’s ‘full-on assault’ on freedom with a pledge to work for all Americans, including by providing $25,000 in assistance for first-time home buyers and having Medicare cover the long term costs of in-home care for seniors.

Before the Kamala Harris rally in Greenville on Sunday, Chanelle Pickens stood next to her 12-year old daughter, Addison, and acknowledged she was not wild about all of Harris’ ideas.

“There are some issues I do not agree with,” Pickens said, declining to name them. But that has not stopped her and Addison from volunteering with the Harris-Walz campaign to go door to door and try to persuade other voters to cast their ballots for Harris.

Why? Because of abortion rights and the glaring differences between Harris and Donald Trump in temperament and rhetoric, Pickens said. 

“When I hear Trump’s campaign speeches, a lot of them are about fear and about warnings and negative rhetoric,” she said. “I think a lot of Kamala’s conversations are about peace and about prosperity and about the population performing together to create unity.”

When she encounters a voter still on the fence, she tries to remind them that “we are to love our neighbors greater than we love ourselves,” she said.

“It speaks to the greater American in you.”

When Harris took the stage a few hours later, her message was remarkably similar.

‘A new and optimistic generation’

Harris began the final stretch of her 2024 campaign in the state that could decide the election, seeking to again highlight the contrast between her promises to work for all Americans and Trump’s frequent calls for revenge. 

Harris, speaking to a capacity crowd at Williams Arena at Eastern Carolina University, highlighted the growing number of Republicans who have either supported her campaign or warned that Trump was unfit to return to the White House.

Harris pointed out recent reports that Ret. US Army Gen. Mark Milley, who served as chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff during Trump’s administration and the first two years of Biden’s, told Bob Woodward of the Washington Post that Trump was a “fascist to the core” and was “now the most dangerous person to this country.” 

That danger would only grow if Trump returned to the White House, Harris said.

“I do believe Donald Trump is an unserious man, but the effects of him being back in the White House would be brutally serious. Just imagine Trump with no guardrails,” she said, referencing his comments about wanting to be a dictator on Day 1, and his threats to turn the US Department of Justice against his political enemies.

The most recent example of the danger Trump poses, she said, came in the two weeks since Hurricane Helene, when Trump spread several blatant lies about the state and federal response to the storm in North Carolina. Those lies, both Republican and Democratic officials say, hampered relief efforts, hurt morale of first responders, and caused some residents to hesitate applying for the aid they need. 

“Donald Trump cares more about scaring people, creating fear, running on a problem, instead of what real leaders do, which is to participate in fixing problems,” Harris said.

“I care about fixing problems and as president of the United States I will be focused each and every day on solving problems that affect you and your family,” she said.

She also vowed, within minutes of each other, to be “a president who works for all the American people” and to “always fight for all the American people.”

Defeating Trump would allow Americans to close the book on the violent and undemocratic rhetoric that he has brought to American politics over the last nine years, and usher in “a new and optimistic generation of leadership,” Harris said.

“Together we will build a brighter future for our nation.”

‘Support to the sandwich generation’

Harris stuck mostly to her stump speech and its main points, emphasizing her record as a prosecutor and as Attorney General in California, prosecuting child sex traffickers and holding big banks and for- profit colleges accountable for their predatory practices. 

She also repeated her pledges to address the affordable housing crisis with $25,000 in assistance for first-time home buyers, and to expand the child tax credit for families with newborns to $6,000 in the first year of their child’s life.

But she also mixed in some relatively new policies. 

Harris discussed a proposal her campaign released last week to have Medicare cover the long term costs of in-home care for seniors who need help performing daily tasks like eating and bathing. 

“Expand[ing] medicare to cover home health care for seniors,” she said, would mean that “seniors can live at home with dignity.”

But in healthcare, dignity is expensive.

So the move would also “give more support to the sandwich generation,” she told the crowd, “those of you who are raising young children and taking care of your parents.”

Harris recounted her own experience caring for her mother after she had been diagnosed with cancer. 

“For those of you who have taken care of somebody who needs that kind of help, it’s about trying to cook something that they have a taste for and want to eat. It’s about trying to find something that they can wear that is not irritating their skin and is soft enough, it’s about trying to figure out something you can do to just bring a smile to their face,” she said.

As she spoke, the crowd responded with affirmations that suggested they shared her experience.

@cardinalandpine

For Kamala Harris, the issue of home healthcare is personal. Harris helped take care of her mother when she was diagnosed with cancer that ultimately took her life. Under the Vice President’s proposal, Medicare would pay for home healthcare so people aren’t forced to leave the workforce to take care of an ailing parent.

♬ original sound – Cardinal & Pine

‘I’m really excited’

Addison Pickens won’t be able to vote for president until 2032. But that doesn’t mean she isn’t paying attention.

She was eager to make the trip from Raleigh on Sunday morning to see Harris live.

As her mother spoke about the issues that mattered most to her, Addison listened, nodded, and watched as other rally goers milled around them. Several used canes or walkers. Some younger than Addison held their parents’ hands as they walked toward their seats in the main hall. 

So what was on her mind this close to an election that meant so much but that she couldn’t yet participate in?

“I’m really grateful to have possibly our first Black woman president, which I think is awesome,” Addison said. “I’m really excited to see what happens.”

Addison then looked at her mother and smiled.

Her mother smiled back.