Former President Bill Clinton stumped for Vice President Kamala Harris in Georgia on Monday, praising the Democratic nominee on the issues of the border and the economy while stressing the importance of turning out to vote in the battleground state.
“All we gotta do is show up,” Clinton told a group of supporters in Columbus, Ga., on Monday. “If we show up, we’ll win. And it’s in your hands.”
Drilling down on the point, the Democratic former president told those gathered on Monday that Harris will win if they “want it bad enough.”
“And if you decide you got something better to do for the next few days, you’ll regret it for the rest of your life,” he added.
Clinton went on to criticize Harris’ opponent, former President Donald Trump, and Republicans for “lying,” including pointing specifically to Georgia firebrand GOP Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene’s social media post earlier this month amid Hurricanes Helene and Milton in which she insinuated that the federal government can control the weather.
“I’ll tell you something, folks: I love being in politics and I love public service,” he said. “But if I had had the power to change the weather, I would have been in a different line of work.”
The former president also honed in on the issues of the border and the economy, two topics that polls show are of high importance to voters and ones in which Republicans generally have an edge.
Clinton slammed Trump – as Harris herself often does – for killing a border security bill that a bipartisan group of senators spent months negotiating. He praised the Biden administration for doing “increasingly tough things trying to control the border” over the last three years while at the same time working to ensure families can stay together, an apparent criticism of Trump’s “zero-tolerance” policy at the border which led to children being separated from adults.
He made the case that most Americans are not “anti-immigration” but rather “anti-chaos.”
Clinton also lauded Harris for presenting a “credible, compelling economic program” while Trump, he said, wants to “give billionaires another tax cut.”
“Well, let me tell you something: I’ve got a few friends who have made a billion dollars, they’ve worked for it, they’ve earned it,” he said. “But the friends that I have, they’re proud to pay taxes on what they owe.”
The Harris campaign announced last week that it was sending the former president out on the trail in the southern battleground states of Georgia and North Carolina this week, with an eye on utilizing the one-time Arkansas governor to appeal to rural voters, a bloc that has moved away from the Democratic party in recent elections.
In Georgia on Sunday, Clinton spoke at a Church service in Albany and addressed supporters at a fish fry in Fort Valley before heading to mingle with voters at the state fair. He is set to embark on a bus tour in North Carolina later this week.
Until President Joe Biden flipped Georgia in 2020, Clinton was the last Democratic candidate for president to win the Peach State, which took place in 1992. He did not notch a victory in Georgia during his reelection bid in 1996.
Clinton on Monday praised Georgia Democrats for their work ahead of the 2020 election, not only for helping Biden win the state but also for helping send two Democrats to the senate to represent it.
“And we did it because – not just cause we did well in Atlanta – but because where there was an opportunity anywhere outside of Atlanta, we punched above our weight,” Clinton said.