Kamala Harris and Tim Walz appeared together Tuesday in the hometown of Michigan’s largest university, trying to burnish their credentials with young voters and calm Democrats nervous about the apparent deadlock in the race to remove Donald Trump from the White House has led to an apparent deadlock in the race to keep Donald Trump out of the White House. dragged along.

Much of the rhetoric at the evening meeting in Ann Arbor, a city synonymous with the University of Michigan and its student population of nearly 53,000, was aimed squarely at the new voters who have traditionally been a source of votes for Democrats . Speaking in a city park just south of the university campus, Harris offered solace to a generation many of whom see their challenges as existential.

“I want to speak specifically to all the young leaders, all the students who are here today,” Harris said. “So I love your generation. I really do, and one of the things about that is that you are rightly impatient for change.’

“You are eager for change because look, you have only known the climate crisis and so you are leading the charge to protect our planet and our future. You, your young leaders who grew up in active shooter drills and are fighting to keep our schools safe. You, who now have fewer rights than your mothers and grandmothers, are standing up for reproductive freedom, and so for you I know that these issues at stake are not theoretical. This isn’t political for you. It is your lived experience, and I see you, and I see your power.

It was a similar tone struck by Maggie Rogers, the 30-year-old Grammy-nominated singer-songwriter who was the rally’s warm-up act and one of several music stars the Harris campaign has booked for their recent events.

“As I stand here with you today, I can no longer ignore the headlines I see on my phone. I have to face the reality of what’s going to happen over the next eight days, and to tell you the whole truth, it’s terrifying,” Rogers said.

“These are such wild and unprecedented times, and the energy feels so high, and the future feels so uncertain, and I don’t always know what to do with that feeling, but there is something bigger than fear for me, and that is action, all of you here today and now, and voting – voting is the key to the future.”

Two days ago, early voting began in Michigan, and Walz and Harris both encouraged young people to vote. Whether they do so could be critical to securing Democratic victories up and down the ballot in a swing state where polls show no clear frontrunner.

Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin, which make up the trio of Democratic states in the “Blue Wall” along the Great Lakes, have been where Democrats have been counting on their candidates in the White House for decades.

That confidence was shattered in 2016, when Trump narrowly won all three in his victory over Hillary Clinton, but Biden was able to reclaim them, again narrowly, four years later. The margins are expected to be slim this year — polls show Harris and Trump with an equal or narrow lead in every state, just as they have for the four battleground states in the Sun Belt.

Walz acknowledged the tension, telling the crowd, “If you feel any of that fear, any of that nervousness, any of that worry, we have the solution for you: get out and vote for Kamala Harris. I know, I did it last Wednesday with my son, who voted for the first time, and it works.”

Among the Blue Wall states, Michigan gave Biden his largest margin of victory in 2020, and its governor, Gretchen Whitmer, is among the rising stars in the party that was briefly considered his successor until Harris intervened. the Oct. 7 attack and subsequent invasions of Gaza and Lebanon alienated the large community of Arab Americans and Muslims around Detroit, who would otherwise be expected to support Democrats.

Harris has said little differently than Biden on the conflict, noting that she supports a ceasefire in Gaza and the release of hostages taken by Hamas on October 7. But her campaign found time at the Ann Arbor meeting to hear from Assad Turfe, the government’s top leader. senior Arab-American official in the Detroit area, who said his community should support the vice president.

“Vice President Harris has called for a ceasefire that will bring the hostages home, allow displaced families in Lebanon to return to their villages, and give the Palestinian people the dignity and self-determination they deserve. If she wins, she will continue to do everything she can to provide relief to innocent civilians and secure lasting peace for the region,” said Turfe, Wayne County’s deputy county executive.

“We know what Trump thinks about Muslims and Arab Americans and how he treats us,” Turfe continued, referring to the ban Trump imposed during his presidency on people entering the United States from Muslim-majority countries, and his recent comments in support of the invasion of Israel. of Gaza.

“If he gets another chance to occupy the Oval Office, he will only bring more chaos and more suffering.”

However, it was not enough to prevent a dozen people, mostly young people, from interrupting Harris’ speech, shouting “stop the genocide” and waving signs reading “Leave Harris”. The vice president, who has experienced this repeatedly during the campaign, responded as she often does: “We all want this war to end as quickly as possible and get the hostages out, and I will do everything in my power to make it happen.” ensure that So.”

The war in Gaza is an issue important to Haley Litman, a psychology student at the University of Michigan who attended Harris’ speech. But she said withholding her vote from the vice president wouldn’t solve anything.

“There have definitely been protests on both sides, and it’s an issue for me. However, I think that choosing Kamala gives us the opportunity to address this problem. “If we were to elect Trump, I feel like there would be no opportunity to address that issue,” she said.