Former President Bill Clinton gave a lengthy defense of Vice President Kamala Harris during a campaign stop in Durham, North Carolina, on the first day of early voting in the battleground state.
Gov. Tim Walz (D-MN) introduced Clinton as “the comeback kid” who “knows a little something about being an underdog and being underestimated” — a nod to the Harris campaign’s recent polling woes.
But once onstage, Clinton used his trademark charm and long-winded delivery to explain why he thinks voters should choose Harris over former President Donald Trump.
“I know both the candidates pretty well,” said Clinton, who was a friend of Trump in the 1990s. “I think Kamala Harris is the only candidate in this race with the vision, the experience, the temperament, and yes, the will to [do what’s best for the country] on good and on bad days.”
Trump is narrowly leading Harris in North Carolina and every other swing state, per the RealClearPolitics polling average.
Clinton, the former governor of Arkansas, earned the “Comeback Kid” nickname after he pulled off a surprising second-place finish in the 1992 New Hampshire presidential primary, a turnaround after a sexual affair scandal involving former nightclub singer Gennifer Flowers.
Three decades later, Harris has run her truncated campaign by calling herself the “underdog” against Trump, and supporters are starting to worry it could be true as polls tighten in the Republican’s favor.
Clinton made his comeback case for the Harris-Walz campaign by emphasizing the issues and Harris’s character.
“He wants four more years of chaos, four more years of the blame game,” the 42nd president said. “We want a leader who will take us to buckle down, to solve problems, to seize the opportunities to give us a stronger middle class with greater ability for more people to work their way into it.”
Clinton made sure to plug his own record a few times, pointing out that he balanced the annual budget his last three years in office and managed to lower the national debt. He also lamented his wife’s 2016 loss to Trump, expressing his frustration that Trump was able to make her private email server such a prominent campaign issue.
But he also attacked Trump’s tariff ideas, saying that they would cost the average consumer $4,000 a year. Clinton explained away high inflation during the Biden-Harris administration by noting that most world currencies also experienced rising prices and said that Harris’s national price gouging law is necessary because grocery store chains are larger and more profitable than in the past.
Continuing a broader theme of the Harris campaign, Clinton said that Trump is more worried about himself than about the country.
“Solutions and getting along better with your neighbors are bad for his brand, isn’t it?” he said. “I mean, you don’t have to count the lies; you just count the I’s. ‘The sun came up this morning. I made it happen. It rained yesterday. If I had been president, that never would have happened.’”
He even mused about what would happen if Trump jailed him, saying that at 78 years old, he’d rather be in Guantanamo than in a Colorado prison because at his age, being too cold is a much bigger concern than being too hot.
Clinton later joked about his age again, saying he doesn’t have any elections left to run, that he’s too old to gild a lily, and yet he’s still two months younger than Trump.
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Turning more serious, Clinton said that Harris will lead the country to a brighter place going forward, contrasting it with what the nation would look like under Trump.
“I’ve been doing this a long, long time, and I can honestly say that this time I am not here running for anything anymore,” he said, “except for my grandchildren’s future. “
