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    • In Ann Arbor, Kamala Harris urges younger generations to vote
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    In Ann Arbor, Kamala Harris urges younger generations to vote

    Pabio Posted on

    ANN ARBOR — With eight days until the Nov. 5 election, Vice President Kamala Harris on Monday evening urged a large crowd of University of Michigan students and other young voters to help the nation turn the page on former Republican President Donald. Trump, saying their generation is “rightly impatient for change.”

    Citing many issues that have defined a younger generation, from growing up with the threat of climate change and active shooter drills in schools to a more recent rollback of abortion protections nationwide, Harris said: “The issues at stake are not theoretical. problems for you. This is your lived experience…I see you and I see your power.

    With early voting underway across the state of Michigan, Harris, the Democratic presidential candidate, has vowed to fight for the issues that motivate young voters, including working to end the conflict between Israel and Hamas in Gaza. At one point, when some of the people present began to interrupt her, she said: “We all want this war to end as quickly as possible and for the hostages to be released and I will do everything in my power to as president to achieve this. »

    Much of the 25-minute speech, for which she was introduced by her vice presidential running mate, Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz, revolved around Harris’ plans to cut costs and help small businesses and first home buyers, as well as its arguments. that Trump, who is running for re-election after losing to President Joe Biden in 2020, would implement tariffs equivalent to a national sales tax and implement other parts of a program that would at least According to a research group in Washington, this could accelerate the reduction of Social Security benefits.

    Harris said that while she considers Trump an “unserious person,” she added that “the consequences of him returning to the presidency are brutally serious.”

    “There is so much at stake in this election,” she said. “It’s not 2016 or 2020. We can all see that Donald Trump is more unstable and more unbalanced and now wants unchecked power. This time there will be no one to stop him.”

    A few thousand people filled a large open space in Burns Park, a park in the Ann Arbor neighborhood close to downtown and UM, as a warm, sunny fall day turned into a cool evening as the sun set before Harris took the stage. Maryland singer-songwriter Maggie Rogers, whose hit songs include “Alaska” and “Light On,” joined Harris at the park.

    Harris drew loud cheers from the large crowd, many of whom held up blue signs and corn reading “Vote” and interrupted Harris with chants of “Kamala.”

    Harris and Trump are frequent visitors to Michigan with only about a week left in the campaign. Monday was Harris’ 15th day in Michigan this year, although she made four visits there before launching her presidential campaign in August. Trump’s rally in Michigan on Saturday marked his 15th day of campaigning in the state this year.

    It was Harris’ first rally in Ann Arbor, long a Democratic stronghold in the key battleground state of Michigan. Polls show a near deadlock between Trump and Harris, both in Michigan and across the United States.

    In response to Harris’ visit to Michigan on Monday, Republican National Committee Chairman Michael Whatley said Harris was trying to “shine a light” on people about her “dangerously liberal agenda” and noted that most Michigan voters think Trump is ‘better positioned to take on the economy.’

    Trump campaign spokeswoman Victoria LaCivita used the title of one of the songs Rogers sang, “Light On,” in criticizing Harris, saying that if she were elected, “Michiganians won’t be able to afford to keep the lights on.”

    Many of those waiting in line to see Harris in Ann Arbor on Monday said they strongly supported the vice president’s candidacy, but did not think she would win the election.

    Ann Arbor residents Mitchell Silverman, a retired software developer, and his wife, Deborah Panush, a retired educator, admitted they were not confident about the outcome of the Nov. 5 election, but they said they didn’t think Harris could or should have campaigned differently than she did.

    “Terrified,” Silverman said when asked how confident he was in Harris’ victory, adding that he felt better about the outcome before the 2020 election than he did this year.

    The Jan. 6, 2021, riot at the U.S. Capitol is one of the main reasons Silverman said he feels differently this time around.

    “I don’t understand how January 6 could happen and 47 percent of Americans think it’s still a good idea to do it again,” he said.

    “I am nevertheless hopeful because history has shown time and time again that there is an opportunity to surprise,” Silverman said. “If you’re the right age, you realize you didn’t expect the Berlin Wall to fall, and it did, without a shot being fired.

    “I never expected to see a black president in my lifetime, and I saw it too.”

    Panush, who had never seen Harris speak in person and was excited to do so Monday, said, “Having hope is better than the alternative,” which she said is despair.

    Neither Silverman nor Panush felt Harris should have done more to show she would distance herself from President Joe Biden.

    As vice president, “her job is to be the loyal second,” so it wouldn’t make sense for her to turn around and appear critical of Biden, Silverman said.

    Claudia Piper, a social worker in Ann Arbor, said her biggest worry is a Trump victory followed by his death in office and the rise to the presidency of Trump’s running mate, Sen. J.D. Vance of Ohio. She fears that if this happens, women could lose not only their reproductive rights, but also their right to vote, and that the United States could become what she calls a Christian-fascist state.

    Piper said that while volunteering on the UM campus in recent days, she encountered several young white men who happily expressed support for Trump and mocked Harris’ candidacy.

    “I’ve never seen this kind of rage before, and I’ve been in politics since I was 12,” Piper said.

    Candace Bramson, an Ann Arbor resident and research physician at a pharmaceutical company, said she follows politics closely and watched Harris’ convention speech, her debate with Trump and followed many other public speeches she has given.

    “I think it’ll probably be mostly the same, but I’m still excited to see her in person,” Bramson said.

    She said she was “quite nervous” about the election result.

    “I looked at the polls and they are deadlocked,” she said. “I just hope there’s an error in the polls, or they didn’t take the turnout into account.”

    She said everyone in her social circle was very engaged in the election and many had already voted.

    Bramson said she doesn’t think Harris should do more to show she’s moving away from Biden.

    “He’s done great things,” like passing a historic climate bill through the Inflation Reduction Act, Bramson said. “I don’t know why people are so critical of Biden.”

    Earlier in the day, Harris stopped at a company outside of Saginaw that produces semiconductor materials, which last week, funding of up to $325 million was awarded thanks to a Biden administration bill, known as the CHIPS and Science Act, aimed at boosting domestic supply chains and helping manufacturing. At Hemlock Semiconductor, where Harris met with workers and delivered brief remarks, she referred Trump’s criticism of bipartisan bill and said that when Trump was president, “he sold advanced chips to China that helped them in their military modernization program.”

    “This is not … what is in the best interests of America’s security and prosperity,” she said, according to a press report on the event, which was not broadcast.

    On Monday, Harris also spent about 20 minutes touring a union training center in Warren, where apprentices learn a range of skills such as glass fitting and industrial painting. She briefly spoke to a small crowd of supporters at the end of the tour, touted her support for unions and called Trump an enemy of unions. When a man said she would win the next election, Harris gave him a high five. “Save our country from him,” another man in attendance told Harris, prompting others in the room to nod in agreement.

    While Harris touted federal investments in manufacturing jobs, what’s at stake this November is about more than the White House’s current efforts to create good-paying union jobs, she said. “One of us will be elected, and one of us will sit in the Oval Office on January 20. It’s a choice on many levels, including whether you want Donald Trump to sit in the Office oval pondering his enemies list or what we’re going to do together…focus on American workers and American families,” Harris said.

    She said she was confident she would defeat Trump. “We are going to win,” she said to applause.

    Contact Paul Egan: 517-372-8660 or [email protected]. Follow him on X, @paulegan4.

    Pabio
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