GRAND RAPIDS, Michigan — “This is not 2016 or 2020,” Kamala Harris said here Friday, on a campaign swing through this battleground state. “The stakes are even higher this time.”
But for Michigan Democrats listening, it’s sure starting to feel like a repeat of those two earlier races — all the way down to threats to move across the border to Canada should Donald Trump pull off what to them is inconceivable: Winning on Nov. 5.
As they watched Harris hammer Trump in a park framed by foliage in full color, hoisting their phones to snap photos of her and pining to hear Beyonce’s “Freedom” when Harris walked out, nearly 20 Democrats who spoke to POLITICO conceded that what was once a brat summer had faded into a plodding autumn.
The uneasy Democrats are now wrapping their heads around how the race became this impossibly close — and what they might do if Trump, currently leading within the margin of error here according to an average of public surveys, pulls this off.
Anxiety — and honest-to-God fear— has replaced joy on the trail for fretful Democrats 18 days out. Harris didn’t even say the word in her remarks. Instead, she described at least three times a “fight.”
“The election is here right now,” Harris said. “We have to energize and organize and mobilize and remind our neighbors and our friends that their vote is their voice.”
And not long after she walked off stage, voters here were contemplating what they would do not just in the days before they make it to the ballot box, but after if their preferred outcome didn’t materialize.
Some were weighing voting with their feet.
“Oh, God, she has to win: I don’t want to live in a Trumpian hellscape,” said Erin Conklin, a 62-year-old retired homemaker and artist. “We might have to leave: Canada, if they’ll take us.”
Gabriela Jelinek, a 32-year-old marketer from Grand Rapids who took meetings at her day job while waiting for the rally at the park, said she had begun gaming out how she would survive a Trump victory.
“Truthfully, I have thought about moving out of the country,” she said. “I’ve also thought about having to marry a friend in order to protect my assets as a single woman.”
Why?
“Like a male friend — in order to make sure my life is protected, because I feel like we’ll be going to times where we need male permission to do everything.”
Mary Harig, a 64-year-old retired registered nurse who wore a “Cat Ladies for Kamala” T-shirt, had progressed even further in her talks with her husband, who didn’t have long left as a postal service worker before he could retire.
“We’re close enough to Canada,” Harig said. ‘“And my husband has said, too, ‘We cannot take another four years of this.’ And if this does happen, we will go to Canada.”
Or somewhere warmer. Perhaps, said Nelson Soto, he and his wife would move to the Dominican Republic or Spain.
“We’re not making serious plans, but we’re having serious discussions at this point,” Soto said. “Let’s just hope that in the next couple of weeks everything goes well, so that it doesn’t have to come to fruition.”
The trope of disaffected American voters moving abroad to escape a presidency not of their preference is a well worn threat not many carry out. Six months into Trump’s first term, the number of U.S. citizens applying for permanent residency in our neighbor to the north rose just 3.6 percent, according to statistics from Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada.
But the sentiment is deeply felt. And the contingency planning marks the dread many Democrats feel in the tightening homestretch of a race that is not certain for either candidate. These aren’t just any voters, but voters who live in a battleground county within a battleground state: the presidential candidate who has taken Kent County has taken the state’s electoral votes in each contest since 2008, with the exception of Michigan-born Mitt Romney in 2012.
It is a closeness weighing on the campaigns. In her speech, Harris seized on Trump’s “exhaustion” on the trail in recent days.
But interviews with voters here revealed another kind of fatigue, too — one far different from the fiery activism and Women’s Marches that followed Trump’s 2016 win. Some are tired of politics they don’t see changing significantly regardless of the outcome.
Zach Baker, 32, described himself as to Harris’ left, and said “she’s got some pretty messed up stances” on issues such as the war in Gaza.
“If this wasn’t a purple state, I wouldn’t vote for her,” Baker said. He added, ”things aren’t gonna change dramatically for Kamala.” There would be “a little bit more protections” for workers and women, he conceded, “but there’s not gonna be big changes.”
If Trump won, Baker has resigned himself to perhaps engaging in some protests, and some “activism.”
But Baker’s mood did not match the tenor of Harris’ remarks.
As she closed, Harris seemed to be almost trying to manifest a post-November rally that didn’t send the White House back to Trump.
“Never again! Never again! Never again!” she said.
Her audience joined her in the chant.
It was not at all clear that all of them believed it.
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