A presidential campaign in the United States sometimes depends on the ‘nostalgia factor’, on former presidents of the respective parties appearing, not just to give an air of grace, but to try to lend their winning formula to the candidates. With less than a month to go before the elections, with all polls pointing to another extremely close vote in the state of Georgia, the Democratic Party has finally used one of its ‘wild cards’, a trump card saved specifically for the poorest areas of the country: 42 President of the United States, Bill Clinton.
On Sunday, Clinton avoided the big city of Atlanta and traveled through rural Georgia, an African-American Baptist church in Albany and a small fish fry pilgrimage in Fort Valley, to promote Kamala Harris’s candidacy and convince voters outside the urban areas. The historic Democratic president spoke at a service at Mount Zion Baptist Church in Albany, where he called for a “united” country and lamented the polarization and misinformation that has spread across the US.
“Bringing people together and building, repairing differences, these are the things that work. Blaming, dividing, belittling – they get a lot of votes at election time, but they don’t work,” Clinton said in Albany, an important location for the civil rights movement of the 1960s, cited by Associated Press.
The former president added that “this election and the future of the country will be about what people, undecided about voting, do over the next three weeks.” “It’s the craziest thing I’ve ever seen,” he commented.
In the afternoon, the former American leader went to Peach County, Fort Valley, about two hours south of Atlanta. With a cap on his head and a pin on his shirt, he challenged the fishermen to vote for the Democratic Party again, stressing that “they [republicanos] will have a very difficult hill to climb” if Democrats win Florida.
Clinton also went to Kamala Harris’ campaign headquarters in Albany, where he confirmed that he himself asked the campaign to send him to the rural areas of the region, where he feels more comfortable speaking.
According to the New York Timesthe Democratic strategy of going to the most isolated and agricultural areas of the territory has been replicated by the most competitive states in this election: instead of attacking only the large urban centers, where it is already the favorite, Harris’ campaign wants to try to turn the suburbs of the South, where conservative values govern and where the Republican Party has always had a stronger presence.
The truth is that there are few names capable of applying this strategy like Bill Clinton, whose rise to power is intrinsically linked to the difficulties of the North American rural class. His southern accent from Arkansas, where he was governor, his approach to more common and light topics, his in-depth knowledge of each population’s farm and his economic curriculum from the 90s are obvious points in his favor. And Clinton also pointed out the similarities with Tim Walz, the vice presidential candidate and “number 2” to Kamala Harris, stating that “it wouldn’t hurt to have someone in the vice president’s office who follows the price of corn, cereals and soy”.
But Clinton’s figure is useful for Kamala Harris because of the potential she has among African-American voters, crucial to winning Georgia. In 1992, Clinton, with his image as a man of simple, poor, working-class origins from the underdeveloped South, captivated both black voters (who sympathized with his struggle and liked his ease in the communities) and conservative white voters (who are revised at their origin). As President, he appointed four black secretaries, defended the introduction of quotas for African-American communities and his term coincided with an increase in the purchasing power of ethnic minorities in the USA, further contributing to his popularity with black voters.
Until Bill Clinton came along, campaigning in conservative states like Georgia or South Carolina, where the sizable African-American population continues to struggle mightily to vote, was seen almost as a waste of time for Democrats. The relationship between Clinton and the African-American electorate was so strong that, in 1998, writer Toni Morrison wrote in the “New Yorker” magazine that Bill Clinton had been “the first black President”. History ended up forgetting that Morrison, winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature, used the expression, not as a compliment, but to associate the exoneration process against Clinton, and the way he was treated by conservative media, with the discrimination of black people in press and politics.
Now there are doubts about whether Clinton still has this ability to move black voters – the Associated Press pointed out that a large part of them no longer remember the former president’s mandates and his importance for ethnic minorities in the USA. The visit came just days before early voting begins in Georgia, which begins Tuesday. This Monday, Clinton will continue traveling through the suburbs of the state of Georgia, avoiding the metropolitan region of Atlanta; He is then expected to lead a mini-busing campaign across North Carolina, once again prioritizing rural areas.
Georgia will be one of the states that will receive the most attention on the night of the presidential elections, on November 5th. In 2020, Joe Biden won the state’s 16 electoral votes by a difference of just 11,000 votes (out of 5 million voters). The region was the only one in the South to vote in favor of the Democratic Party. According to the latest surveys, aggregated by New York Times and through the website FiveThirtyEightDonald Trump maintains a slim lead in Georgia over Kamala Harris, with a difference of 1.1% compared to the vice president.
