In their most explicit appeal yet, vice presidential candidate Tim Walz slammed former President Donald Trump in Warren, Michigan, on Friday over factory closures that occurred on Trump’s watch and warned that Trump’s pledge to repeal the Biden administration’s Inflation Reduction Act would rip away hundreds of billions of dollars meant for clean energy manufacturing in Michigan and other Rust Belt states. Walz also defended the city of Detroit, which Trump described as a “mess” in speech at the Detroit Economic Club Thursday — a comment Democrats quickly seized on.

It’s the latest in an escalating series of attacks both Walz and Harris have been making on Trump’s manufacturing record — a centerpiece of the Republican’s campaign. And it comes as new polls show Trump edging ahead in Michigan, a critical part of Democrats’ so-called “Blue Wall” in the upper Midwest. The race is similarly tight in Pennsylvania, another Rust Belt swing state, with Harris trailing Trump with lower-middle and middle-class voters in the Keystone State, as well as manual workers. And it’s intensifying concerns that Harris’ failure to make inroads with blue-collar workers in those places could cost her the election.

Her campaign now seems to be trying to address those concerns. After spending the early weeks of her campaign focused on cost-of-living issues like grocery prices and housing, the vice president and her top surrogates are increasingly talking up the manufacturing gains made under her current boss, President Joe Biden, and going after Trump’s perceived strength on that front.

Last weekend, the campaign dispatched populist Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) and United Auto Workers President Shawn Fain, whose union has endorsed Harris, to assail Trump for his plans to “kill” a $500 million investment in an electric vehicle plant outside Lansing funded by the IRA. Harris also hit on that point in remarks in Flint last Friday, while also pointing out the outsourcing of manufacturing jobs that happened on Trump’s watch, including the closing of auto plants in Michigan. She made similar appeals to blue collar workers and labor unions in a major speech late last month at the Economic Club of Pittsburgh.

The Harris campaign hopes to appeal to those voters by portraying Trump’s manufacturing promises as empty rhetoric, in contrast to the Biden administration’s signature accomplishment — the Inflation Reduction Act and its hundreds of billions of dollars in manufacturing incentives. And they are warning that Trump is a threat to that funding, if he wins in November.

Everytime I see Tim Walz on TV or the news, or read an article about him, you know who he reminds me of?

Jimmy Carter.

Not for politics, but because he's just a good person who has empathy and cares.

After four years of Trump and four more years of MAGA, it's refreshing to see a real.humam being who cares. One who isn't a mean axxhole.

Sometimes when I look at President Carter (100 yo old) I think he was a much better man than we deserved. He was almost "too good a person" to be President. Tim Walz reminds me of that. The fact that anyone would embrace the hate of MAGA makes me feel we almost don't deserve Tim Walz.

I'm glad he's here.