Trump, Harris hit the battleground states with nearly 25 million votes already

Democratic presidential candidate Kamala Harris told a town hall in Pennsylvania on Wednesday that her administration will be different from President Joe Biden’s because Republican Donald Trump campaigned in Georgia, another battleground state.

Harris’ attempt to distance herself from Biden comes after several polls show the president is hampering her bid and that voters are eager for a new direction with less than two weeks to go. Elections on November 5.

Harris has largely shrugged off questions on the campaign trail about how — and to what extent — he would deviate from Biden’s policies.

“My administration will not be a continuation of the Biden administration,” Harris said during a CNN-televised town hall. “I bring my own ideas and my own experience to this role. I represent a new generation of leaders on a number of issues and I believe we need to really take new approaches.”

Harris’ town hall in Chester was an attempt to convince a dwindling number of undecided voters to support her in a closely divided race where even a small percentage of the vote could be critical.

Fielding several questions from the audience, Harris promised to tackle high food prices, said it was time to end the war in the Middle East and called Trump a fascist and “a danger to America’s well-being and safety.”

The vice president also responded to questions about his changing position on policies like fracking, saying he doesn’t believe in “pride of position” when what’s important is building consensus on issues.

Harris has repeatedly said she would not ban fracking if elected president, a reversal of her position during her first presidential campaign in 2019.

Asked if she was in favor of expanding the Supreme Court to 12 justices from the current nine, Harris said: “I believe there needs to be some reform of the court and we can explore what that actually looks like.”

RECORD ADVANCE VOTES

Nearly 25 million voters have already cast ballots, either through in-person early voting or mail-in ballots, according to tracking data from the University of Florida’s Election Lab.

Several states, including the battleground states of North Carolina and Georgia, set records on their respective first days of early voting last week.

“Georgia voting is at record highs,” Trump said at a religiously themed “voting and believing” event in Zebulon, Georgia. “The votes in every state, frankly, are at record levels. We’re doing really well and hopefully we can fix our country.”

In recent days, Trump has sought to appeal to Christian evangelicals, hoping they will put aside any concerns about his frequent lewd comments such as his account of Arnold Palmer’s anatomy.

Trump, who has made campaign rallies a staple of his political career starting as far back as 2015, said in Zebulon that “in many ways, it’s sad” that his time as a political candidate is coming to an end. If he wins on November 5, he will serve out his second and final term.

“We’ve been doing this for nine years and it’s down to 12 days,” he said.

After Zebulon, Trump spoke in Duluth, Georgia, for a rally with former Fox News star Tucker Carlson and former independent presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr. Country music star Jason Aldean was also in attendance, encouraging attendees to vote early, a message Trump has been slow to embrace after denouncing the practice for years.

Pennsylvania and Georgia are among the seven battleground states that will decide who wins the presidency, and both candidates are likely to spend much of the rest of their campaigns there.

Earlier in the day, Harris took advantage of comments from Trump’s former White House chief of staff, John Kelly, who told the New York Times that the former president fits the “general definition of a fascist” and admires dictators.

Harris called Trump’s remarks cited by Kelly “deeply troubling and incredibly dangerous.” The Trump campaign denied Kelly’s reports, calling them “debunked stories.”

The vice president tried and failed to get Trump to agree to a second presidential debate on CNN after she was widely believed to have won the first and only presidential debate between the two candidates, which took place in September on ABC News.

According to the latest Reuters/Ipsos poll, Harris had a narrow 46 percent to 43 percent lead nationally over the former president.