Democrats have been delirious with joy ever since President Joe Biden finally ended his untenable re-election campaign last month, making way for a feel-good ticket of Vice President Kamala Harris and her freshly announced running mate, Minnesota Governor Tim Walz. If they win in November, she will be the first woman to be elected president, while he is a plainspoken former schoolteacher and football coach with a surprisingly progressive record as a lawmaker, catapulting to viral fame in recent weeks for simply saying what many of us have been thinking: Republicans Donald Trump and J.D. Vance are “weird.”
More than that, with a palpable momentum, the pair seem to be in about as strong of a position as possible to keep Trump from returning to the White House and enacting the terrifying Project 2025, a far-right plan to replace the government with a Christian nationalist autocracy.
Eager to make history and defeat Trump, liberals of all stripes swiftly coalesced around the new ticket, which drew a reported 15,000 supporters to a Wednesday rally at Detroit Metro Airport in Romulus — what Walz said was the largest of the campaign so far.
“We Minnesotans … we’re a stoic people, of few words,” Walz joked. “But holy hell, can you throw a party here in Michigan!”
However, the electric atmosphere — which reached a crescendo with Harris descending the Air Force Two to the jubilant sounds of Beyoncé’s “Freedom” — soured with more than a dozen medical emergencies throughout the event, a curt clash between Harris and antiwar protesters, and a logistical transportation meltdown that left thousands of supporters stranded on the side of the road for hours.
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The candidates were joined on stage by a revolving door of high-profile supporters, including Detroit Mayor Mike Duggan, Governor Gretchen Whitmer, UAW President Shawn Fain, Senator Debbie Stabenow, and other members of congress, who all gave rousing speeches. But each was interrupted by calls from the crowd for medics as people apparently became dehydrated in the summer heat.
“Thank you for caring for your neighbors,” Walz said.
Wayne County is also home to one of the largest concentrations of people of Middle Eastern origin in the U.S. Many of them joined a movement urging voters to choose “uncommitted” over Biden in the primary election in protest of Israel’s U.S.-backed attack on Gaza, which has has resulted in at least 40,000 deaths and possibly up to 186,000, many of them Palestinian women and children. The Uncommitted Movement drew an eye-popping 100,000 votes in Michigan and spread to other states across the country, allowing it to send delegates to the Democratic National Convention later this month to advocate for a ceasefire.
Seeing as the Uncommitted Movement could seemingly make or break the 2024 election, Metro Times was curious if Harris and Walz would speak on the matter. A group in the crowd attempted to force the issue, starting a chant of “Kamala, Kamala, you can’t hide — we won’t vote for genocide.” A visibly agitated Harris then tried to shut them down, saying, “I am speaking now. … If you want Donald Trump to win, then say that, otherwise I’m speaking.”
The response also clashed with the campaign’s otherwise joyful messaging, in contrast with Trump’s vision of doom and gloom. Instead of, say, using the opportunity to show support for Israel as well as concern for the humanitarian crisis in Gaza, as both Harris and Walz have done in the past, the matter was not brought up again.
Harris did reportedly address the issue with a bit more grace behind closed doors, however, as founders of the Uncommitted Movement later said they briefly spoke with both candidates at the rally. According to a press release, the organizers “requested a formal meeting with Vice President Harris to further discuss their demands of an arms embargo and a permanent ceasefire,” adding that Harris “shared her sympathies and expressed an openness to a meeting.”
Unfortunately, it was all downhill from there. When the rally ended around 8:30 p.m., there appeared to be no coordinated plan to direct attendees back onto the buses that would return them to the various offsite parking lots recommended by the campaign organizers. The situation quickly spiraled into chaos, with police giving conflicting instructions, hard-to-find buses stuck in gridlock traffic, and thousands of rally-goers left stranded on the side of the road as darkness set and mosquitos descended.
It took Metro Times two and a half hours to get back to our car, following the more than three-hour rally. (And doors opened two and a half hours before that.) The Harris-Walz campaign does not appear to have a public-facing email to reach for comment.
