(RepublicanNews.org) – In a speech delivered on Martin Luther King Jr. Day ahead of the Republican Iowa caucuses, Vice President Kamala Harris pleaded with black voters to join forces with the Democratic Party to win in 2024 and keep Republicans out of the White House, who Harris said pose a threat to democracy by overwhelmingly backing former President Donald Trump.
Harris was the headline speaker at the annual King Day at the Dome gathering hosted by the NAACP in Columbia, South Carolina, on Monday, January 15th. During her speech, the vice president said freedom in America faces a “profound threat,” citing the Supreme Court decision to overturn Roe v. Wade in 2022, book-bans backed by Republicans, increased gun violence, and long lines at the voting booth as a few examples.
“Freedom is never truly won,” Harris said, but something that is earned and won “in every generation,” quoting Coretta Scott King, the widow of the late MLK Jr. The vice president urged voters to turn out to the polls and “roll up” their sleeves, adding that they were “born for a time such as this.”
Harris was greeted by protesters unhappy with the Biden administration’s stance on the conflict between Israel and the Palestinian militant group Hamas. The protest is one more sign that voters who typically lean toward voting Democrat are fed up with President Joe Biden and Harris, who have refused to call for a ceasefire in the region.
South Carolina also contains a large influential black voting bloc in the presidential primary for the Democratic Party, which is coming up at the beginning of February. Aside from the backlash of pro-Palestinian sympathies in the left-leaning black demographic, there are other signs of waning support, such as a recent survey that found only 67% of black voters still view the president favorably.
In a move typical of the Democratic Party, Harris appealed to these voters by claiming the country was “witnessing a full-on attack” on their freedoms.
She also mentioned Republican presidential candidate Nikki Haley, the state’s former governor, who stirred recent controversy by not citing slavery as a major cause of the American Civil War. Harris claimed the GOP “tried to erase, overlook, and rewrite” America’s “ugly” past. Haley recently placed third in the first GOP primary content in Iowa.
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