Harris, Biden share the stage, and an agenda, at Pittsburgh Labor Day appearance with union members

President Joe Biden hadn’t got a chance to speak before chants of “Thank you, Joe” went up from the union members gathered at the IBEW Local #5 hall in Pittsburgh’s South Side late Monday afternoon. And his appearance, in a city where Biden has been a repeat visitor on Labor Day and where he launched his 2020 campaign for president, marked both his popularity with organized labor, and a passing of the torch to his vice president, Kamala Harris.

“I’ve celebrated many Labor Days in Pittsburgh,” Biden said shortly after he took the stage, in what was his first joint appearance with Harris since she became the Democratic nominee. “And it’s always good to be back with so many great friends.”

In a speech that lasted a bit more than 20 minutes, Biden touted some of his administration’s accomplishments: once-in-a-generation investments in infrastructure, 16 million jobs created, and legislation to protect union pensions that might otherwise have gone insolvent. But he made sure to credit Harris for much of that work, and said that choosing her as his vice president was “the single best decision I made as president. ... If you elect Kamala Harris as your president, it will be the best decision you have ever made.”

Biden said he would soon be on "the sidelines," but told union members, “We’ve got one more job to do together.

“Are you ready to elect Kamala Harris as the next President of the United States of America?” he asked. “And in the process are you ready to make Donald Trump a loser again?”

The answer came in the form of enthusiastic cheers from those inside the union hall, an invitation-only group whose numbers nevertheless raised objections from the fire marshal earlier in the day. (The event's location was largely kept quiet, though a small group of Republican protesters did appear outside the union hall.) And attendees warmly received Harris herself moments later.

Harris, too, emphasized that she and Biden were on the same page when it came to a labor agenda. And in a widely anticipated move, she joined Biden in announcing her opposition to the sale of Pittsburgh-based U.S. Steel to Japanese firm Nippon Steel Corporation.

“U.S. Steel is an historic American company," she said, "and it is vital for our nation to maintain strong American steel companies. And I couldn't agree more with President Biden: U.S. Steel should remain American-owned and American-operated.”

Tom Riese

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90.5 WESA

Harris opposition to the sale had been widely telegraphed before her remarks, and the issue is one of the few issues she and former President Donald Trump have in common: He, too, has said he would fight the sale.

But Harris and Biden both took pains to stress their differences from the Republican nominee in almost every other respect Monday.

For example, Harris castigated one of Trump’s signature policies — a global 10% tariff on all imported goods — as “what in effect would be a national sales tax. I call it the Trump National Sales Tax on everyday products and basic necessities.” She said tariffs would cost the average American family as much as $4,000 a year as importers passed along the costs to consumers: Economists generally agree that the cost of tariffs are borne by consumers, though Harris’ estimate is on the high end of their projections.

Harris also warned that Trump would seek to roll back the Affordable Care Act, President Barack Obama’s healthcare overhaul. She reminded the audience that the ACA had limited the ability of insurers to reject customers on the basis of pre-existing conditions. “We fight for a future where no person has to go broke just because they get sick,” she said.

“America has tried those failed policies before,” she said, “and we are not going back.”

In a refrain adopted by Democrats in recent weeks, audience members chanted, “We’re not going back!” — a rebuke to Trump’s previous administration and an attempt to underscore that, as Biden said of the progress Democrats had made, “It’s all at risk because of Donald Trump. With a stroke of the pen he can get rid of a lot of this.”

Still, when one audience member shouted out that Trump should be thrown in jail, Harris — whose campaign has contrasted Trump’s legal travails with her own record as a former California prosecutor and attorney general — cautioned, “The courts will handle that, and we will handle November.”

Polls show that Harris’ entrance in the race has transformed it: Polls that showed Biden dropping further and further behind now show a dead heat or a slight Harris lead. Numbers in Pennsylvania have been especially close, and Democrats need support from the rank-and-file workers that Biden has long connected with.

In their own remarks, union leaders hailed Biden and Harris for their accomplishments, and for charting a path forward, while warning that Trump could roll much of it back.

AFL-CIO president Liz Shuler, riffing on contentious remarks made about childless women by Trump running mate JD Vance, said the Democrats could bring about “a future where they don’t call us working woman ‘childless cat ladies.’ They call us ‘Madam President.’”

Shuler and several other speakers also touted Biden and Harris for shepherding through the Butch Lewis Act, a 2021 bill that rescued union pensions from insolvency.

Kenny Cooper, who leads the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers, noted that Harris, as the vice president in a Senate divided 50-50, cast the tie-breaking vote to save those pensions. “When the Senate was all tied up on the rescue of America’s pension plans, they were only tied up for one reason: we couldn’t’ find a Republican senator that would vote for American workers,” Cooper recounted. “Vice President Harris showed her real colors.”

Harris made no mention of fracking for natural gas, a practice that has been a major industry in Pennsylvania but which she decried during a failed presidential bid a half-decade ago. Trump and other Republicans have sought to use the issue against her, though she has since said she no longer favors a ban. But while Harris focused elsewhere, Gov. Josh Shapiro addressed energy production — a category which includes fracking, at least by implication — while warming up the crowd. "Under President Biden's leadership, this nation is producing more energy than ever before," he noted correctly.

"Vice President Harris will continue to make sure we continue to be competitive on energy," he added. "She's got our back."

Harris shared some of her signature lines, saying that Democrats “can see what is possible unburdened by what has been,” and saying the party judged success by who it lifted up, rather than who it beat down. And she warned that “this is going to be a tight race to the very end. So let’s not pay too much attention to those polls.

"We are the underdog in this race, and we have some hard work ahead of us," Harris concluded. "But here’s the beauty of us in this room: We like hard work.”