Vice President Harris storms the battleground of Michigan on Friday with three campaign stops in a blue wall state crucial to Election Day victory and a place where polls show the race is on a knife’s edge.
“Just 18 days left in one of the most consequential elections of our lifetime,” Harris told a crowd in Grand Rapids on Friday afternoon before planning visits to Lansing and Oakland County later in the day.
The passage through Michigan, which has 15 electoral votes, comes as follows aggregated query from Decision Desk HQ and The Hill show former President Trump with a 0.7 point lead in the Great Lakes State. Early voting begins next Saturday in Michigan, and Harris urged her listeners Friday that “the election is happening right now.”
In the meantime, Trump was also on the campaign trail on Friday with a rally in Detroit after him insulted the Motor City last week as a “mess.”
Harris in Grand Rapids lashed out at Trump and grabbed him to a report from Politico about an aide who described the Republican nominee as “exhausted and in denial.” [some] Interviews” on the home stretch of the campaign.
“He’s dodging debates and canceling interviews,” Harris said. “His own campaign team recently said it was due to exhaustion. Well, when you’re exhausted on the campaign trail, the real question is whether you’re fit for the toughest job in the world.”
The opposing candidates have done it repeatedly questioned each other’s suitability for service as they battle in the tight race for the White House. This follows increasing questions about President Biden’s age and cognitive abilities that dogged his campaign before his historic exit from the contest.
Harris also warned about Project 2025 and Trump’s stance on abortion, calling Trump “not a friend of labor.” She’s working on gaining a foothold with unionized workers in key states like Michigan and Pennsylvania.
The vice president later gave a speech to the United Auto Workers union in Lansing in which she called the former president an “existential threat to the American labor movement.”
During her speech, she filmed clips in which Trump denigrated union workers.
“Listen to his words,” Harris told the crowd. “He thinks the value of your work is essentially meaningless. That’s what he says to compare it to the work of a child. When we know here that the work you do is complex.”
It is supported by major unions such as the United Auto Workers and the AFL-CIO, but also by the International Brotherhood of Teamsters especially the suspension of a recommendation this cycle after endorsing Biden four years ago.
The vice president steered clear of talk of international politics as she courted Michiganders in Grand Rapids and Lansing, but she opened her rally in Oakland County, the final stop on Friday, with brief remarks about the war in Gaza.
“Our Arab American community has deep and proud roots in the Detroit area,” she said, pointing to the support of local Arab American leaders. “I know that this year has been very difficult, given the level of death and destruction in Gaza and the civilian casualties and displacement in Lebanon. It’s devastating.”
She referred to the recent killing by Yahya Sinwar, the head of Hamas and the architect of the October 7, 2023 attacks, saying his death “can and must be a turning point” in the conflict, repeating her initial reaction to development during a campaign stop in Wisconsin on Thursday.
“Everyone must seize this opportunity to finally end the war in Gaza, bring the hostages home and end the suffering once and for all,” Harris said.
Michigan was seen as that Starting point of the protest votes against Biden in the primaries earlier this year over the administration’s handling of the Israel-Hamas war.
Harris also raced this week through Pennsylvania and Wisconsin, two other blue-wall battlegrounds where the race is similarly close. The vice president has a value of 0.3 points Lead over Trump in Pennsylvaniaand Trump has one 0.5 point lead in Wisconsin.
The states are considered crucial to any candidate reaching the 270 electoral votes they need to win the Oval Office this fall, even as Harris tries to navigate a path through other swing states such as Arizona, Georgia and North Carolina.
Harris has a 2.2-point lead over Trump nationally, according to the DDHQ average. Multiple surveys This week we found an even smaller margin, which gives Harris just a 1 point edge.
Updated at 8:56 p.m. EDT
