Dearborn, October 31 - The Democratic Party nominee for the presidency made further efforts this week to maintain an edge with Muslim voters in this crucial swing state, with a campaign statement today that, if elected, she will commission a likeness of the recently-eliminated leader of Hezbollah alongside those of four iconic US presidents in South Dakota.
The Kamala Harris for President organization issued a statement via X and several other online media to the effect that Sheikh Hassan Nasrallah, whom Israel assassinated in a targeted airstrike on his Beirut bunker just over a month ago, deserves to have his face commemorated and venerated next to those of George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Abraham Lincoln, and Theodore Roosevelt.
The X post also contained a short video clip of Harris attempting a Lebanese Arabic accent as she sang the praises of "Sayed Nasrallah" and the hope he brought to millions of Shiite Muslims.
Polls have Harris and Republican candidate Donald Trump at a statistical dead heat in several swing states. Both candidates and parties have made overtures to the American Muslim communities, especially in this area of Michigan, a stronghold of the demographic. Trump campaigned there last week, securing an endorsement from one prominent community leader, though the extent of that leader's influence remains open to debate. Muslim Americans have favored the Democratic Party, by and large, for at least two decades, especially after 9/11 and its aftermath, when a GOP administration held power.
Recent dissatisfaction among vocal elements of the community regarding what they view as the Biden-Harris administration's insufficient response to Palestinian suffering in the Gaza Strip has led to numerous threats not to vote for Harris in the election - despite her rival having moved the US Embassy to Jerusalem, recognized the city as the capital of the Jewish State, acknowledged the legitimacy of Israeli settlement in territories the Palestinians claim, and brokered regional peace deals that sidelined the Palestinian issue, when he held the office from 2017 to 2021.
The impact of Harris's Rushmore promise remains unclear. Her choice of Nasrallah over, for example, the more-recently-slain Yahya Sinwar, leader of Hamas in Gaza, an actual Palestinian and not merely the head of an Iranian proxy militia, has raised eyebrows among both Muslims and political analysts.
A campaign spokesman explained that they had originally decided to promise a likeness of Sinwar, but selected Nasrallah instead when engineers warned them that the size of his ears would render an accurate reproduction impossible.
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