Democratic candidate Kamala Harris urged young Americans to take up the fight for democracy from generations who had fought for freedom in the past and vote for her over Republican candidate Donald Trump.

Harris was in Ann Arbor, Michigan, for a Monday evening rally after spending the day campaigning in the crucial swing state.

Her pitch to an audience of young voters, many of who were students from the nearby University of Michigan, was to use their vote in the upcoming United States election to protect their rights.

“Generations of Americans before us fought for freedom and now the baton is in our hands,” Harris said. “The baton is in our hands.”

Harris said their generation was the one that grew up with climate change as a reality, with active shooter drills in schools, and with now fewer reproductive rights than their mothers or grandmothers.

“It is your lived experience. I see you and I see your power,” she said to the cheering crowd bundled in hats and coats against the cold autumn weather. “You are rightly impatient for change.”

Harris was introduced by her vice-presidential running mate, Minnesota Governor Tim Walz, who used his folksy style to appeal to a packed crowd.

“When you are old and grey like me and you’re sitting on the porch and you’re rocking in that chair and your grandchildren asked you ‘What did you do in 2024 to save democracy’,” he said. “And you are going to be able to tell them every damn thing you could, every damn thing.”

Harris and Walz are trying to reach young voters, many of whom are casting ballots for the first time.

They had help onstage from singer-songwriter Maggie Rogers who is an ardent abortion rights supporter. Rogers performed and gave an emotional plea to the audience..

“As I’m standing here with you today, I can’t ignore the headlines I have been seeing on my phone any longer,” Rogers said. “It is terrifying. I don’t always know what to do with that feeling but there is something to me that is greater than fear, and that is action. Voting is the key to the future,” she said.

Reviewing education

Earlier in the day, Harris used her visit to Michigan to make a promise to review which federal jobs require a college degree if elected as president.

Harris is promising to reassess which federal jobs require a college degree if elected as United States president.

She told workers at a semiconductor facility in Saginaw County the country needed to change the idea that certain jobs require college degrees.

“We need to get in front of this idea that only high-skilled jobs require college degrees,” said Harris, promising she would tackle this on “day one” of her presidency.

“One of the things immediately is to reassess federal jobs, and I have already started looking at it, to look at which ones don’t require a college degree,” she said. “Because here is the thing: That’s not the only qualification for a qualified worker.”

Education divide

Harris’s comments reflect Democrats’ efforts to bridge the political divide in the country between college-educated and non-college-educated voters. Democrats are trying to attract support from the latter group, which now tend to vote Republican.

Last month, Harris introduced proposed economic policies aimed at spurring domestic manufacturing.

Her visit to the Hemlock Semiconductor plant in central Michigan was to highlight the Democrats’ efforts to build up the US semiconductor industry. The company recently received a $325m federal grant for a new factory from the new CHIPS and Science Act.

Trump has been critical of the law, blasting it during a lengthy interview on The Joe Rogan Experience on Friday. “That deal is so bad,” Trump said on the podcast, adding that the subsidies went to “rich companies”.

But Harris said the country has to be willing to balance its economic traditions and the jobs that go with it, with the need to push for new technology.

“When we understand who we are as a nation, we take great pride in being a leader on so many things. And we have a tradition of that,” she said. “But I think that what we know as Americans is that we cannot rest on tradition.”

She added: “We have to constantly be on top of what is happening, what is current, and investing in the industries of the future, as well as honouring the traditions and the industries that have built up America’s economy.”

Trump ‘fixated’ on himself

Harris also took a shot at Trump before she flew to Michigan. She told reporters that Trump’s rally at Madison Square Garden helped prove her point about what was at stake in the election.

Harris said the Sunday event “really highlighted the point I’ve been making throughout this campaign”, which is that Trump is “fixated on his grievances, on himself, and on dividing our country, and it is not in any way something that will strengthen the American family, the American worker”.

Trump held a rally at Madison Square Garden on Sunday where several speakers made racist and crude remarks, including comedian Tony Hinchcliffe, who described Puerto Rico as “a floating island of garbage”.

Harris plans to deliver her closing campaign argument on Tuesday in Washington, DC.

“There’s a big difference between he and I,” she said.