Harris-Trump showdown: Vice president picks up the pace on trail, makes pitch to progressives

ANN ARBOR, MI – For a second straight day, Vice President Kamala Harris made a trio of stops in a key battleground state as the clock quickly ticks towards Election Day in her race against former President Donald Trump.

One day after campaigning in Philadelphia, swing state Pennsylvania’s largest city, the vice president made three stops in Michigan, another crucially contested Rust Belt battleground.

With Harris and Trump locked in a margin-of-error race in both the national and swing state polls and eight days to go until Election Day, Harris is kicking off a fast-paced final week of campaigning.

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For the first time in two months, the vice president teamed up at a large rally with her running mate, Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz, as they spoke in front of what their campaign said was a crowd of roughly 21,000 gathered on a brisk autumn evening.

On the eve of what is being touted as her closing argument in an address in the nation’s capital, Harris gave a preview, saying “we have an opportunity to turn the page [from Trump] and chart a new and joyful way forward.”

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The vice president, who has spent parts of the past couple of weeks courting Republican voters disaffected with Trump, interjected into her Monday night speech appeals to the progressive base of the Democratic Party.

She spotlighted that health care insurance “should be a right, and not just a privilege for those who can afford it.”

When interrupted by demonstrators protesting U.S. support for Israel in its war with Hamas in Gaza, she responded “I hear you on the subject of Gaza.”

“We all want this war to end as soon as possible and to get the hostages out,” the vice president said. “I will do everything in my power to make it so.”

Ann Abor, a Democratic-dominated city that is also home to Michigan’s flagship state university, has also seen plenty of protests over the war in Gaza.

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Walz, speaking before Harris, made a passionate pitch on gun violence, emphasizing that freedom includes being “free to send your kids to school without them being shot dead in the halls.”

“I’ll take no crap on this. I know guns, I’m a veteran. I’m a hunter. Kamala and I are both gun owners. We know that you can uphold the Second Amendment, but also uphold our first responsibility – protecting our children,” the governor added.

Harris, after delivering her closing address on Tuesday, returns to the battleground states on Wednesday, with stops in North Carolina, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin.

Those three states, along with Michigan, Georgia, Arizona and Nevada, had razor-thin margins that decided President Biden’s 2020 White House victory over Trump. Additionally, the seven states are likely to determine if Trump or Harris wins this year.

Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin are also the three Rust Belt states that make up the Democrats’ so-called “Blue Wall.”

The party reliably won all three states for a quarter-century before Trump narrowly captured them in the 2016 election to win the White House.

Four years later, in 2020, Biden carried all three states by razor-thin margins to put them back in the Democrats’ column and defeat Trump.

Both the Democratic and Republican presidential nominees, as well as their running mates, have made repeated stops in the three states this summer and autumn.

Get the latest updates from the 2024 campaign trail, exclusive interviews and more at our Fox News Digital election hub.