Vice-President Kamala Harris raced across Michigan on October 28, 2024, making three stops in the battleground state to begin a furious final week of her presidential campaign. She and her running mate, Gov. Tim Walz of Minnesota, capped the day with a joint appearance in Ann Arbor, where they addressed an outdoor crowd on a brisk evening. Both delivered what has evolved into their standard stump speeches and avoided bringing up the racist remarks delivered by speakers at former president Donald Trump’s rally at Madison Square Garden on October 27.
After weeks of explicit appeals to Republicans, Harris sprinkled her speech near the University of Michigan’s campus with outreach to progressive Democrats. She said health care “should be a right, and not just a privilege for those who can afford it.” When she was interrupted by protesters shouting about American policy toward Israel and the Gaza Strip, she told them, “I hear you.” “We all want this war to end as soon as possible and to get the hostages out,” Harris said. “I will do everything in my power to make it so.”
Walz addressed gun violence, a topic that polls show resonates deeply with young voters who have grown up participating in active-shooter drills in their schools. He first said that freedom includes being “free to send your kids to school without them being shot dead in the halls,” then took a rhetorical jab at Trump. “I’ll take no crap on this,” Walz said. “Both members of the Democratic ticket are gun owners. The Republican nominee can’t pass a background check.”
The rally in Ann Arbor, with a crowd that campaign officials estimated at 21,000 people, was the campaign’s first there since Harris replaced President Joe Biden as the Democratic nominee. Though the city is a Democratic stronghold that is home to Michigan’s flagship state university, it has also been a hub of resistance to American support for the Israel-Hamas war.
Just over a week before Election Day, Harris is increasingly speaking to Americans who are the least likely to vote or engage in politics. Her Michigan tour came as more than 1.8 million Michiganders — about a quarter of all registered voters — have already cast their ballots, according to data from the state secretary of state’s office. For Harris, the rest of this week is a window into her campaign’s efforts to reach what few undecided voters remain. She plans to follow her Michigan trip with what her campaign is calling a “major speech” on October 29 at the Ellipse in Washington, the same spot where Trump spoke to his supporters before they stormed the Capitol on January 6, 2021.
Speaking in Washington in view of the White House is the Harris campaign’s latest attempt to break through to disengaged voters who have tuned out political news. Last Friday, she diverted from the battleground states to hold a 30,000-person rally in Houston with Beyoncé. On October 28, she taped an interview with Charlamagne Tha God and “The Breakfast Club,” a nationally syndicated radio show that is popular with Black listeners. The interview, her second on the show this month, will air on October 29.
While the Beyoncé rally was an attempt to amplify the Harris campaign’s message on abortion rights, and the Ellipse speech is meant to do the same on democracy and Trump’s attempt to overturn the 2020 election, her events on October 28 in Michigan were targeted at the state’s economy. She stopped at a semiconductor factory in Saginaw, a predominantly Black and Latino city in the state’s northeast, and at a union training facility in Macomb County, a working-class Detroit suburb. In Saginaw, Harris discussed her plans to remove four-year degree requirements for some federal jobs. “We need to get in front of this idea that high-skilled jobs require a college degree,” she said. “It’s just not true.” Shortly after, in Macomb, she accused Trump of not being “concerned about or working for working people.”
The Ann Arbor rally was the latest Harris event to feature a concert before the vice-president’s remarks. Indie rock musician Maggie Rogers played a roughly 20-minute set before the candidates took the stage. On Monday night, John Legend and Bruce Springsteen played at a rally for Harris with former president Barack Obama in Philadelphia. Last week, Willie Nelson played and Beyoncé spoke in Houston, while Springsteen also played in Atlanta. Mumford & Sons are set to play on October 30 in Madison, Wisconsin, with other big-name acts expected at events in the days before Election Day. — The New York Times
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