Michelle Obama Finally Takes the Mound Against Donald Trump
The World Series of politics is heading into its final, tie-breaking game. And the Democrats are bringing in their superstar closer.
Their bullpen's ultimate ace, Michelle Obama , is finally set to take the mound, answering the prayers of anxious fans in this history-making slugfest who have been clamoring for a reliever who can throw some strikes.
The former first lady is making her debut relief appearance with Vice President Kamala Harris next Saturday, Oct. 26, in Michigan on the first day of early voting in the crucial battleground state, according to a senior Harris campaign official.
Together, she and Harris will urge Michigan voters to hurry and cast their ballots—as soon as that very day—in a final bid to conquer Donald Trump , whose attacks on Democrats have become increasingly more personal, and vulgar.
Former President Barack Obama will appear together with Harris at a rally in Georgia next Thursday, Oct. 24, the senior official says.
The Harris campaign says both Obamas will be headlining major get-out-the-vote rallies in battleground states in the closing stretch until Nov. 5. Details, dates and venues, however, are vague—and not unintentionally.
While Michelle Obama has been working behind the scenes to drive voter turnout in swing states, she has shied away from a campaign trail fraught with the threat of political violence after two assassination attempts against Trump. It is Trump, ironically, who the former first lady blames for threatening her family's security after he whipped up a right-wing frenzy with false claims about Barack Obama's birth certificate.
"Donald Trump, with his loud and reckless innuendos, was putting my family's safety at risk," she wrote in her 2018 memoir . "And for this I'd never forgive him."
The Obamas are crucial brand-name allies for the Harris campaign as polls show Trump has picked off a sliver of Black voters, mainly men, who would normally be solidly on base with Democrats. Harris has gone all out in the past week to woo them—and other key demographics—as the summertime thrill of Kamalamania has waned to autumn election anxiety.
Where she may have lost ground with some Black voters, Harris has made gains with so-called Republican "normies," including former Trump administration officials and GOP lawmakers, who view the former president as a threat to U.S. national security.
Obama, the former president, made his first rally appearance last week in Pittsburgh—the one where he took flak for lecturing Black men to vote for Harris—and will do more in the coming days in Tucson, Las Vegas, Detroit and Madison, according to the senior Harris campaign aide. (The Harris team says Obama inspired supporters at the Pittsburgh event to sign up for 981 volunteer shifts.)
Michelle Obama is heeding her own advice that she gave to a supercharged crowd at the Democratic National Convention in August. And her windup comes as the race to the White House between Harris and Trump has tightened to a paper-thin margin in which a few fast balls across the plate could .
"If we see a bad poll—and we will—we've got to put down that phone and do something," she told Democrats gathered in Chicago. "If we start feeling tired, if we start feeling that dread creeping back in, we gotta pick ourselves up, throw water on our face, and what? "
