Vice President Kamala Harris’s two-week honeymoon period came to a screeching halt in the battleground state of Michigan when Gaza protesters crashed her campaign rally.
Anti-Israel hecklers chanting “Kamala! Kamala! You can’t hide! We won’t vote for genocide!” disrupted her Detroit rally on Wednesday night. The scene was reminiscent of protests that have plagued President Joe Biden just about everywhere on the campaign trail until he ended his 2024 reelection bid last month.
Harris had already been waging an extremely “online” campaign, and her response — “If you want Donald Trump to win, then say that. Otherwise, I’m speaking” — predictably split Democratic voices on social media.
Though some praised Harris’s response, arguing she showed strength in the face of repeated interruptions, the vice president’s comments appeared to reignite activist campaigns pressing Biden and Harris on Gaza.
The group “Abandon Biden” claimed in a statement that Harris showed “disdain for citizens of this country.”
“Now, we are speaking, Madam Vice President. We have repeatedly expressed our concerns about platitudes of promise in place of any and all action regarding the Israeli genocide in Gaza and U.S. funding of it,” the group wrote. “Without explicit plans and policies, there is no reason for any Americans of good moral conscience to believe a Harris-Walz administration will do anything to end this genocide.”
The backlash was a wake-up call for Harris who has been basking in early campaign success, seeing the Democratic ticket vault up polls and turning a voter enthusiasm rebound into a fundraising bonanza. During that time frame, public calls from progressive Democrats for the administration to do more to bring about an immediate ceasefire in Gaza had quieted down and Harris’s rallies focusing on bringing back “joy” went by largely uninterrupted.
Now there’s no sign of the anti-Israel protests quieting down ahead of the Democratic National Convention in Chicago this month. The Abandon Biden campaign organized a counterconvention in Chicago with the goal of damaging Harris’s White House hopes. “We seek to punish the president and the vice president, so that it will be known that when you engage in genocide, you will never win,” Executive Director Hassan Abdel Salam said in an email.
A leftwing group called Behind Enemy Lines has been plotting for months to “shut down the DNC for Gaza.” And despite Biden dropping out, the group has not let up and trained its attention on “Killer Kamala.” It’s calling activists to Chicago for a protest so disruptive that they shut down the convention on Aug. 20.
Leaders of the “Uncommitted Michigan” movement, which successfully rallied 100,000 Michigan Democratic primary voters to back an “uncommitted” candidate over Biden back in February, further complicated the Detroit heckling situation.
Two group officials briefly spoke with the vice president ahead of the rally, and, afterward, said in a statement that Harris “shared her sympathies and expressed an openness to a meeting with the Uncommitted leaders to discuss an arms embargo.”
The Harris campaign itself, however, said Thursday that while the vice president was open to meeting the group, she had not specifically agreed to a meeting on the grounds of hearing arguments for halting weapons shipments to Israel.
Phil Gordon, Harris’s national security adviser, wrote on X that Harris does not support placing an arms embargo on Israel and “will continue to work to protect civilians in Gaza and to uphold international humanitarian law.”
On the other hand, Daniel Fee, a Democratic campaign strategist based in battleground Pennsylvania, thinks that progressives will ultimately fall in line and back Harris in November.
“When you ask those young people, ‘OK, then what?’ Everybody reverts to form,” he told the Washington Examiner. “They snap back.”
The vice president has taken active steps to appease pro-Gaza protesters of late, including picking Gov. Tim Walz (D-MN) to be her running mate earlier this week over Gov. Josh Shapiro (D-PA). Progressives had specifically objected to Shaprio’s vocal support of Israel’s military operations targeting Hamas and criticism of domestic protesters calling for a ceasefire.
Asma Mohammed, the campaign manager for Vote Uncommitted Minnesota, claimed that Walz “is not someone who has been pro-Palestine in any way” but felt he would be open to hearing the group’s concerns regarding Gaza.
“He is someone who’s shown a willingness to change on different issues,” she told the Guardian.
And on Thursday night, Harris and the rest of the Biden administration signed on to a joint statement with Egypt and Qatar urging Israel and Hamas to resume ceasefire negotiations next week.
The two parties and their allies had made significant progress toward brokering a ceasefire and hostage exchange deal, but that process fell through after Israel assassinated Hamas’s political leader in Iran last week.
The Harris campaign has not yet published her schedule for next week, but the vice president is heading to the West Coast on Friday for events in Arizona, California, and Nevada.
Still, the convention itself, which begins Aug. 19 in Chicago is guaranteed to see Harris and Walz square off with protesters once again.
Pro-Palestinian groups have already secured a permit for a “March on the DNC,” with an anticipated route that runs near the convention and roughly 25,000 participants.
Meanwhile, efforts by the Israeli American Council to host a similar demonstration near the convention center have yet to be approved.
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“It seems like we don’t have equitable access to whatever the other group was approved for,” Aya Schecter, IAC’s chief programming officer, told Jewish Insider on Thursday. “We didn’t get any offer to do a march, not even in an alternative location.”
“We definitely wanted to bring up more awareness around the U.S. citizens who were either killed on Oct. 7 or kidnapped and are still being held in Gaza,” she continued. “That’s something we think is important to raise awareness during the DNC.”
David Sivak contributed to this report.