Members are ready to throw all their weight behind Vice President Kamala Harris.

“A week is a long time in politics” the old saying goes. That adage rarely seemed more appropriate than it did in late July as the 2024 presidential election season entered its final stretch.

All the divisions, doubt, and uncertainty which had been plaguing the Democratic Party suddenly vanished on July 21, when President Joe Biden made his statesmanlike decision to back away from the 2024 race for the good of the country.

In doing so, he made questions of character central to the decision facing the American public on November 5. By standing down from the contest for the most powerful job in the world, President Biden demonstrated a selflessness rarely seen in public life.

When Kamala Harris seamlessly stepped up to the top of the ticket, her candidacy further heightened the contrast between the two political parties. The Democrats were fielding a vigorous former prosecutor while the Republicans were running a convicted felon.

And just when we thought the extremists currently in charge of the Republican Party couldn’t get any nastier, they doubled down. But the racist and sexist remarks made against Vice-President Harris by both the Republican presidential candidate and his running mate ended up backfiring.

The majority of Americans now seem eager to return to a time when elected representatives worked to bring the country together and concentrated on making life easier for its citizens. That’s why Harris added Minnesota Governor Tim Walz to the ticket. He has a record of cutting taxes for working families and providing free school meals for schoolchildren. He also signed a law to provide paid family and medical leave to Minnesotan families.

No longer are Americans prepared to allow extremist policies to be rammed through the corridors of power unchecked. For instance, roughly two-thirds of Americans believe abortion should be legal in all or most cases. But thanks to the Supreme Court—now dominated by extremist appointees—access to abortion is currently restricted in 27 states.

1199 Members in Florida have joined a statewide campaign to restore reproductive freedom by putting a constitutional amendment on their ballot in November (See Family Planning p. 17).

Across all our regions, 1199ers are also paying close attention to pocketbook issues, as inflation has put a strain on family budgets since the pandemic. Thousands joined the Poor People’s March in Washington D.C. in late June (see The Purple Wave, p. 14) to press for more income equality.

Pennsylvania Senator Bob Casey points out that while monthly inflation has slowed with the help of Democrats’ passage of the Inflation Reduction Act, working families are still living with artificially high prices. At its peak, from July 2020 through July 2022, inflation rose by 14 percent. Corporate profits, however, rose by 75 percent over those two years—five times as fast as inflation.

It’s no secret that the billionaire class wants to maintain this unfair status quo and are pouring money into a campaign to unseat Pennsylvania Senator Bob Casey and silence his opposition to the corporate “greedflation” he’s correctly identified.

But members are equally ready to fight back against economic inequality. No amount of money is going to get in the way of 1199ers on the move. The Weekend Warriors program is already in full swing (see Mobilizing our Members, p. 9) and we will not rest until every last vote is counted.