Page 27 of 107 Days

There had been hecklers at the rally in Phoenix the night before, and once again I’d addressed them directly. I’d been talking about health care as a human right when a small group of Gaza protesters interrupted.

“Okay, guys,” I said. “Let’s talk Gaza for a moment. We all want this war to end and to get the hostages out, and I will work on it full-time when I am president, as I have been.”

That morning, we woke to news of an Israeli strike that had killed at least eighty people in Gaza.

As I left the hotel I took questions from the press in the parking lot, underlining yet again that even though Israel had every right to go after Hamas, far too many civilians were being killed and that Israel had a responsibility to avoid these deaths.

There was a long line of supporters still waiting to get through the magnetometers into the university arena where we’d hold the rally.

I was concerned for so many people standing outside in that extreme weather, especially when I heard ambulance sirens.

People were collapsing from heatstroke. Local officials wisely made the call to close the doors to avoid more casualties. Four thousand were turned away.

On that occasion, the officials made the right, humane call.

But there were other times, other venues, where my deputy chief of staff, Erin, had to argue with fire marshals who wanted to shut the doors and turn crowds away long before the posted safe capacity had been reached.

Sometimes this happened when the lines were still long and whole sections of seating had yet to be filled.

It was political gamesmanship, pure and simple.

I was lucky to have a tough-minded team to push back against it. But they did not always prevail.

So many people stand behind a candidate, doing unglamorous, indispensable work.

Juan Ortega oversaw my advance team, the people who wrangle venues, hotels, drop-in visits, liaising with local communities, smoothing over all kinds of problems. One person I saw almost every day was Alexia Lewis.

She was there, in the wings, at every rally.

I would walk from the venue’s green room to a designated spot backstage where, if there was a monitor, I could watch the remarks of the person introducing me.

Then I would move to the wings at the side of the stage.

It would be just me, Alexia, and the Secret Service.

Alexia would stand, her right hand held out in a stop sign, and I would wait obediently behind her.

“Freedom” would play and at the exactly right moment, Alexia would turn her hand over in a go-ahead gesture, and I would head for the stage. She was my human traffic light.

To the twelve thousand who had made it inside at that Las Vegas rally, I expressed gratitude to the Culinary Workers Union, which had endorsed us, and I promised to work to increase the minimum wage.

The CWU’s members are mostly women, mostly immigrants.

They prepare the food, make the beds, clean the rooms, do the invisible work that allows visitors to have a great time.

They are the people you don’t see: hardworking, unsung, underpaid.

The CWU had asked, in earlier discussions, that we eliminate tax on tips, and my policy team had been working on our proposal before Trump’s half-baked announcement.

I’d much rather give a tax cut to low-wage service workers than to billionaires.

But unlike Trump, I worked to pair the exemption idea with an increase in the minimum wage, because the sad fact is that most tipped workers are so underpaid that they don’t earn enough to owe any federal taxes.

For those people, eliminating the tax on their tips would be meaningless.

I stressed that the exemption would be crafted to ensure affluent professionals didn’t start restructuring their compensation to take advantage of the loophole.

Las Vegas was the last stop on this swing state tour.

Air Force Two was heading next to San Francisco, where my political career began.