U.S. Vice President Kamala Harris vowed to empower labor unions and prevent school book bans while addressing a powerful teachers' union on Thursday, seeking to draw a sharp contrast with her Republican rival for the presidency Donald Trump.
In a 20-minute address in Houston to the American Federation of Teachers, Harris, 59, focused on economic policy and workers' rights, touting plans for affordable healthcare and child care and criticizing Republicans for blocking gun limits in the wake of school shootings.
"Today we face a choice between two very different visions of our nation, one focused on the future and the other focused on the past, and we are fighting for the future," she said. "Donald Trump and his extreme allies want to take our nation back to failed trickle-down economic policies, back to union-busting, back to tax breaks for billionaires."
Harris' visit to the union, which endorsed her earlier this week, continues a blitz of campaign appearances since President Joe Biden, 81, dropped his reelection bid on Sunday and urged Democrats to coalesce behind Harris.
"We want to ban assault weapons and they want to ban books," Harris said, a reference to the push by some Republicans to remove books that address gender and sexuality from some school libraries. The Second Amendment of the U.S. Constitution defends the right to bear arms.
Harris' move to the top of the ticket has shaken up a stagnant presidential race. A series of opinion polls conducted since Sunday, including one by Reuters/Ipsos, showed Harris and Trump beginning their head-to-head contest on roughly equal footing, setting the stage for a close-fought campaign over the next four-and-a-half months until the Nov. 5 election.
A New York Times/Siena College national poll released on Thursday found Harris has significantly narrowed what had been a sizable Trump lead. Trump was ahead of Harris 48% to 46% among registered voters, compared with Trump's 49% to 41% edge over Biden in early July immediately following Biden's poor performance at a June 27 debate.
A Emerson College/The Hill poll published on Thursday also found Harris had improved on Biden's numbers by three-to-five percentage points in each of five critical battleground states: Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin. Trump still narrowly leads Harris in all but Wisconsin, which is tied, according to the poll of registered voters in those states.
Trump, 78, on Wednesday night laid into Harris in his first rally since she replaced Biden atop the ticket.
He branded Harris a "radical left lunatic" after she had dominated the campaign the two previous days with withering attacks on him that pointedly raised his felony convictions, his liability for sexual abuse, and fraud judgments against his business, charitable foundation and private university.
Harris touts economic policy in talk to teachers
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