Michelle Obama returns to the political spotlight for the final sprint of the 2024 campaign

Michelle Obama is bringing back her political star power to drum up support for the vice president Kamala Harris in the final sprint of the 2024 elections.

In her first campaign appearance with Harris, the former first lady added a new argument to the fight against reproductive health care by issuing a stark but impassioned warning to men, urging them not to treat women as “collateral damage to your age.” let it become.

“I ask all of you, from the core of my being, to take our lives seriously,” she said Saturday evening at a rally in Kalamazoo, Michigan.

Obama repeated that exact message in one opinion piece published by the New York Times on Monday, and she’ll be back on the road Tuesday to lead a rally in battleground Georgia with her own nonprofit When We All Vote, aimed at engaging young voters.

Obama has made clear her aversion to party politics, but also came out in the open set the stage for Harris’ historic nomination at the Democratic National Convention this summer.

After an extended standing ovation that reflected the immense popularity she commands not only within the party but across the country, the former first lady lifted Vice President Harris as she tore Donald Trump apart.

The comments marked a departure from her once-famous political motto: “When they go low, we go high.”

That theme continued this weekend in Michigan, when Obama portrayed Harris as “someone with the strength of heart to lead our country to a better day” and Trump as someone unfit for the White House.

“In any other profession or field, Trump’s criminal record and amoral character would be shameful, shameful and disqualifying,” she said.

She then explained what she saw as a double standard in this race.

“I hope you’ll forgive me if I’m a little frustrated that some of us choose to ignore Donald Trump’s gross incompetence while asking Kamala to blindside us at every opportunity,” she said. “I hope you will forgive me if I am a little angry that we are indifferent to his erratic behavior, his apparent mental decline, his history as a convicted felon, a known slum owner, a predator found liable for sexual abuse. “

“All this,” Obama continued, “while we’re pulling Kamala’s answers from interviews he doesn’t even have the courage to do.”

Vice President Harris was asked Monday about Obama’s comments and whether she felt she was held to a higher standard than Trump.

“My role and responsibility in the Presidency of the United States is to plead my case before the American people and earn their support, and that is why I spend time traveling around the country listening and talking to people about my plans,” Harris replied.

A new one ABC News/Ipsos poll found that Harris regained a slight lead over Trump nationally in the polls, 51-47%. But the two remain neck-and-neck in the battleground states that will likely determine the winner of the election.

Polls also show a large gender gap, with Trump leading with male voters and Harris ahead with women. Black voters, as well as younger voters, are considered important voting blocs this cycle.

Obama’s appeal to men in her speech last weekend comes after her husband, former President Barack Obama, a key Harris surrogate, expressed his own frustration with black men who he said did not want to vote for Harris because she is a woman.

In a slightly different tone, the former first lady urged men to consider the impact their vote could have on the women in their lives.

“Please do not place our lives in the hands of politicians, especially men, who have no idea or care about what we as women go through, who do not fully understand the far-reaching health consequences that their ill-considered policies will have understand. have on our health outcomes,” she said in Michigan.

Her focus Tuesday will be on convincing new voters and students, according to When We All Vote, the nonpartisan citizen group founded by Obama that works on voter registration. The rally she will headline comes just before early elections end in Georgia.

Fritz Farrow, Gabriella Abdul-Hakim and Will McDuffie of ABC News contributed to this report.