President Biden gave a demonstration on Monday that the Democratic Party now belongs to Vice President Kamala Harris, stepping to the microphone at a campaign event in Pittsburgh to introduce his No. 2 rather than taking the speaking slot of honor for himself.
“Folks, we’ve made a lot of progress, and Kamala and I are going to build on that progress, and she’s going to build on it,” Mr. Biden said at a local union hall as he rallied the labor movement in support of Ms. Harris, who stood behind him leading the crowd in applause. “I’ll be on the sidelines, but I’ll do everything I can to help.”
But while the atmosphere between Ms. Harris and Mr. Biden was warm at their first joint campaign appearance, the president hardly seemed eager to take the supporting role. He spoke for more than 24 minutes, roughly eight minutes longer than the vice president’s remarks. And he talked far more about the accomplishments of his administration than Ms. Harris’s role in them or an upcoming election against former President Donald J. Trump that is expected to be razor thin.
When Mr. Biden finally invited the Democratic nominee up to speak, the crowd chanted “Kamala” as they clasped hands before he planted a kiss on her forehead.
“Can we please give it up again for our president, Joe Biden,” Ms. Harris said before delivering a speech that served as a paean both to organized labor and to the Biden administration’s support of unions.
“We are so proud to be the most pro-union administration in America’s history,” she said.
Ms. Harris’s stop in Pittsburgh capped a Labor Day spent seeking to press her advantage with union voters. Earlier in the day, she held an event in Detroit while her running mate, Gov. Tim Walz of Minnesota appeared in Milwaukee.
All told, Ms. Harris and Mr. Walz managed to visit each of the so-called blue wall states of Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin, appealing to union voters as the ground troops of a campaign that has barely two months left. Still, the events were far smaller than the rallies Ms. Harris has held in recent weeks that have filled up basketball arenas with thousands of supporters.
At Northwestern High School in Detroit, the vice president was greeted onstage by the presidents of unions representing autoworkers, laborers, utility workers and teachers.
“I tell people, you may not be a union member, but you better thank a union member,” Ms. Harris told a crowd of nearly 450 people, attributing union action for paid leave, vacation time, higher wages and safer work conditions.
The question hanging over the flurry of campaign events, however, was just how important unions remain in an American labor force where they represent 1 in 10 workers, half the percentage they once represented in the 1980s. It is also not clear whether union members, especially in the old-line industrial and laborer unions, will side with the Democratic ticket as overwhelmingly as they once did, as Mr. Trump continues his courtship of the working class.`
In Detroit, Michigan’s Democratic luminaries — Gov. Gretchen Whitmer and Senator Debbie Stabenow, and hopefuls like Representative Elissa Slotkin, who is running for Ms. Stabenow’s Senate seat — shared the stage with Shawn Fain, president of the United Automobile Workers; Brent Booker, general president of the Laborers’ International Union of North America; and Randi Weingarten, president of the American Federation of Teachers, among others.
In Pittsburgh, Ms. Harris was joined by Gov. Josh Shapiro and Senator Bob Casey, both Democrats of Pennsylvania, as well as Liz Shuler of the A.F.L.-C.I.O. and Kenny Cooper of the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers. In Milwaukee, Mr. Walz appeared alongside Gov. Tony Evers and Senator Tammy Baldwin of Wisconsin.
All three Democratic governors of the blue wall states are popular with voters and are expected to play key roles in whipping up enthusiasm for Ms. Harris. Mr. Casey and Ms. Baldwin are both seeking re-election.
“This is when you labor leaders, y’all got to go knock on your colleagues’ doors,” Mr. Shapiro said in Pittsburgh. “You got to text them. You got to call them.”
In contrast to the busy day for Democrats, Mr. Trump appeared at least publicly to take the day off. He released a statement praising American workers without mentioning unions.
“We were an Economic Powerhouse, all because of the American Worker!” Mr. Trump wrote. “But Kamala and Biden have undone all of that.”
Even as she moves out of the president’s shadow, Ms. Harris is still following Mr. Biden carefully on policy.
During her remarks in Pittsburgh, the vice president announced that she would oppose the takeover of U.S. Steel by a Japanese company, prompting cheers from a crowd of roughly 600 people. Mr. Biden had taken the same position in March, shortly before he was endorsed by the United Steelworkers, an influential union based in Pittsburgh. (Mr. Trump has also said he opposes the deal.)
“I couldn’t agree more with President Biden: U.S. Steel should remain American-owned and American-operated,” Ms. Harris said.
And their first joint campaign appearance seemed to reinforce why the vice president is now leading the Democratic ticket. It was hard not to notice the difference between their clarity as orators. Mr. Biden told war stories of political campaigns and union leaders from decades ago, his voice fluctuating from a nearly inaudible whisper to a shout as he emphasized his points. Ms. Harris stuck to a cleaner and more streamlined message, arguing that she would fight for workers while Mr. Trump offered a return to a past of union-busting.
The president had suggested that he speak first, volunteering himself for an auxiliary performance, according to three people briefed on the event.
Ms. Harris’s day of travel also underscored a major division still fracturing the Democratic coalition: the war in Gaza. Unions have been some of the loudest voices calling for an immediate cease-fire and the halting of military aid to Israel.
In Detroit, an area where many Arab and Muslim Americans live, Ms. Harris was greeted by about 30 protesters with bullhorns outside her event. In Milwaukee, some attendees silently held up kaffiyehs as Mr. Walz spoke. Several were asked to leave by security.
The busy day did suffer one notable hiccup: In Wisconsin, several cars in Mr. Walz’s motorcade crashed en route to his event in Milwaukee, with staff members and members of the press suffering minor injuries.
The dynamics of union support have been shifting. Mr. Biden won over union voters by 22 percentage points in 2020, according to a Harvard University study, considerably better than Hillary Clinton had done in 2016, when she narrowly lost the presidential election. But even Mr. Biden’s performance was an erosion from when Bill Clinton won union voters by 31 points in 1992.
Union leaders have promised on-the-ground muscle to get out the vote for Ms. Harris, rally their members and pull in groups that have slid toward Mr. Trump, especially white, male workers in and out of organized labor. Counting family members and retirees, one in five voters in Pennsylvania, Michigan and Wisconsin are affiliated with unions, said Steve Smith, a spokesman for the A.F.L.-C.I.O.
But even union officials were not all that certain their ground efforts were breaking through. Terrell Garner, a training instructor for the laborers union’s 5,000-strong local in Detroit, spoke at length of the education efforts the union is making with members and their families and friends, the phone banking and door knocking on weekends in pivotal Michigan.
But when asked how it’s looking for Ms. Harris, he held out a hand and rocked it back and forth: “Eh, 50-50,” he said with a sigh.
“As they become more educated, they do find themselves on our side of the fence,” he added, but time is running short for that effort. Mail-in voting in Michigan begins in just over three weeks.
Union leaders were far more positive. In an interview, Ms. Weingarten said her union’s footprint in Michigan was growing as the A.F.T. unionizes higher-education employees, health care workers, librarians and even some doctors.
“What we’ve learned is that people really trust teachers and nurses,” she said.
But Mr. Trump’s appeal to working-class voters is undeniable. The one union leader not aboard Ms. Harris’s campaign, Sean O’Brien, president of the Teamsters, has continued his dalliance with the former president, resisting pressure from the main Black teamsters organization and some large locals that have shattered precedent by endorsing Ms. Harris on their own.
Appearing on CBS’s “Face the Nation” on Sunday, Mr. O’Brien continued to move the goal posts on an endorsement. He had once said it would come after both parties held their conventions. Now he said the Teamsters cannot endorse until their leadership sits down for an interview with the vice president.
“We represent 1.3 million members,” he said. “Half of our members are Republicans, half of our members are Democrats. So we have to serve all of our membership equally.”
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