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KALAMAZOO, Michigan — Former First Lady Michelle Obama rallied voters for Vice President Kamala Harris on Saturday, painting a stark portrait of the stakes if former President Donald Trump wins a second term. 

In a nearly 40-minute speech to an arena packed with over 7,000 attendees, Obama called out the double standards she believes Harris faces and spoke plainly but impactfully about the significance of the 2024 election, particularly for women and girls. She talked at length about women’s reproductive health and issued a warning to men, telling them that the lives of the women they love hang in the balance. 

“To anyone out there thinking about sending out this election or voting for Donald Trump or a third-party candidate in protest because you’re fed up, let me warn you: Your rage does not exist in a vacuum,” she said. “If we don’t win this election, your wife, your daughter, your mother, we as women will become collateral damage to your rage.” 

The Saturday event, Obama’s first appearance on the 2024 campaign trail for Harris, was held on the first day of early voting in Michigan, a critical battleground state. Obama didn’t hold back when she spoke about Trump, whom she described as dangerous and unfit for office. 

Drawing a comparison between him and Harris, Obama said, “Unlike her opponent, she’s not ducking interviews or cowering in spaces only with applauding audiences. No, she is showing us what a sane, stable leader looks like. . She’s not losing her train of thought or stumbling over her words, and she’s doing it all with vigor and with grace. That’s because Kamala Harris is a grown-up. We need a grown-up in the White House.”

Still, Obama said, the closeness of the race keeps her up at night. If Trump wins, she said, “that ugliness will touch all of our lives.”  

“All of my hope about Kamala is also accompanied by some genuine fear. Fear for our country, fear for our children, fear for what is coming our way if we forget the stakes in this election, and y’all, that’s why I’m here today,” Obama said. “You all know I hate politics. But I hate to see folks taken advantage of even more. So I wanted to do everything in my power to remind the country that I love that there’s too much we stand to lose if we get this wrong.” 

Obama called out what she views as unfair double standards to which Harris is being held by the media and others, speaking to the familiar and longstanding discussion of electability for women candidates. The question, she said, is not whether Harris is ready for the Oval Office, but whether the United States is ready for her.  

She drew a contrast between those “tuning out” and “saying they plan to sit this election out to prove a point” to the top Republicans and former Trump aides, including Trump’s former chief of staff, who have spoken out about the dangers they believe he poses. 

“I hope you’ll forgive me if I’m a little frustrated that some of us are choosing to ignore Donald Trump’s gross incompetence while asking Kamala to dazzle us at every turn,” she said. “His erratic behavior, his obvious mental decline, his history as a convicted felon. A predator found liable for sexual abuse, all this while we take apart countless answers from interviews that he doesn’t even have the courage to do.”

Voters present at the rally were largely hopeful about the election, but shared Obama’s concerns.

“I hope we’ll make history,” said Tamela Spicer, a voter who lives in Ottawa County. “But I am fearful our country still won’t elect a woman.”

Sheri Millard, who lives in Kalamazoo, said she is feeling “hopeful but still afraid” about the election. She and other voters who spoke to The 19th were enthusiastic to hear from Obama, who has largely eschewed partisan politics since leaving the White House. Millard said still keeps a copy of a Vogue Magazine from 2009 with Obama on the cover. Despite stepping back from the political spotlight, Obama remains one of the most beloved and influential figures in the Democratic Party — and her words hold significant weight. 

In 2016, she coined an instant catchphrase in “when they go low, we go high,” setting the tone for how Democrats responded to Trump’s first term in the White House. 

At the 2024 Democratic convention, in her hometown of Chicago, Obama urged anxious Democrats not to be distracted by polls or negative news stories with a rallying cry to “do something.”

“I’m asking you one last time, let us not just sit around and complain,” Obama said On Saturday in Michigan. “If your brother or your son or boyfriend needs to hear your perspective, are you willing to talk to them? Are you willing to send a video of what I’ve just said?”

Obama devoted more than 15 minutes of her speech to the topic of abortion and reproductive rights, one of the central issues driving Harris’ campaign and a deciding issue for many voters The vice president spoke in Houston on Friday to emphasize the consequences of Texas’ strict abortion ban and also met with abortion providers and physicians in Michigan before Saturday’s rally. 

Obama laid out, in detail, how she believes a second Trump term could threaten not just abortion access, but the full spectrum of women’s health and the many things that can go wrong from painful periods to menopause and cancer. In an election defined by gender divides, she asked men to consider what could happen to their wives, mothers, daughters and nieces if Trump were to win the election.

“Please, please, do not hand our fates over to the likes of Trump, who knows nothing about us, who has shown deep contempt for us, because a vote for him is a vote against us, against ourselves, against our worth,” Obama said. “To think that the men that we love can be either unaware or indifferent to our plight is simply heartbreaking. It is a sad statement about our value as women in this world.” 

She added: “To the women listening, we have every right to demand that the men in our lives do better by us to make these choices clear to the men that we love our lives are worth more than their anger and disappointment. We are more than baby-making vessels.” 

Saturday’s rally came on the heels of the star-studded Friday night rally in Houston focused on abortion rights, where singer Beyoncé, another of the United States’ most prominent Black women, endorsed Harris in a rare public speech. 

Barack Obama has also been  hitting the campaign trail with a focus on Black men. He appeared with Harris in a Thursday night rally in Atlanta attended by over 23,000 people, a record attendance surpassed the next day in Houston, when over 30,000 people attended her rally.  

Harris has been barnstorming battleground states in the final sprint to Election Day. Earlier in the week, she completed a three-state swing with former GOP Rep. Liz Cheney in an effort to appeal across the aisle to disaffected Republicans. She’s set to campaign in predominantly Black and Latinx neighborhoods in Philadelphia on Sunday and will hold another rally on the University of Michigan’s campus on Monday with her running mate, Gov. Tim Walz, and singer Maggie Rogers before delivering her closing argument for the campaign Tuesday in an address on the National Mall in Washington. 

Michelle Obama’s closing pitch to voters at the rally on Saturday focused on Harris’ pledge to protect reproductive rights and to sign a bill to protect reproductive rights if Congress passes one. 

“She will do all of this, not because she’s a woman, but because she’s a decent human being, because she cares about the lives of people other than ourselves, and that’s really what this election is about, Michigan,” Obama said. “This isn’t just about what we have an obligation to say no to. It’s about what we have the opportunity to say yes to: someone who had the character and the strength to look at all these challenges and still see a brighter day on the other side.”

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