Hint: It ain't who you think. Kamala Harris and Joe Biden might have spent the last year pandering to the Arab-American community in Dearborn, but they never bothered to show up.

So guess who'll make a stop today? The Associated Press reports that Donald Trump just stole another march on Harris:

Donald Trump is set to visit Dearborn, Michigan — the nation’s largest Arab-majority city — on Friday, according to a local business owner who first insisted the former president call for peace in Lebanon before hosting him.

Metro Detroit is home to nation’s largest concentration of Arab Americans, with a large chunk of them living in Dearborn. The city — which President Joe Biden won by a 3-to-1 margin — has been roiled by political turmoil, with many upset with the Biden administration’s handling of the Israel-Hamas war.

While Vice President Kamala Harris has been working through surrogates to ease community tensions, Trump’s visit will mark the first by either candidate, according to a local leader, Osama Siblani. Earlier this year, Harris met with the city’s Democratic mayor, Abdullah Hammoud, though their discussion took place outside Dearborn.

How in the world did Kamala Harris not make it to Dearborn? For a year, Biden and Harris pandered to this community in particular by using the "good people on both sides" strategy for October 7 and the war Hamas started. The Biden-Harris foreign-policy team made it clear that they blamed Benjamin Netanyahu more than Hamas for the war, at least in terms of rhetoric here at home. Harris even refused to fulfill her official role as president of the Senate when Netanyahu came to the US and addressed Congress in protest of the Israeli determination to end Hamas rather than just arrange for another hudna.

This looks a little like Hillary Clinton's lack of engagement with Wisconsin in 2016. It's not the same scale; Harris has been in Michigan throughout the general election, as well as Pennsylvania and Wisconsin too. She and the Democrats learned that much from 2016. But that makes this even more curious. With all of the time Harris spends in Michigan, she didn't once bother to go to Dearborn? Even when it became clear that she and Biden considered that enclave to have a critical role in carrying the state?

Still, it seems a little curious that Trump connected this well with Dearborn's Arab community, given their hostility toward him in the past. Trump has been much more directly supportive of Israel in its wars against Hamas and Hezbollah than Biden and Harris too, but he has also publicly advised Netanyahu to "wrap it up" soon and get victory as fast as possible. The demand from the restaurant owner for a more direct statement on ending the war explains a statement earlier this week on Twitter/X:

During my Administration, we had peace in the Middle East, and we will have peace again very soon! I will fix the problems caused by Kamala Harris and Joe Biden and stop the suffering and destruction in Lebanon. I want to see the Middle East return to real peace, a lasting peace,…

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) October 30, 2024

I want to see the Middle East return to real peace, a lasting peace, and we will get it done properly so it doesn’t repeat itself every 5 or 10 years! I will preserve the equal partnership among all Lebanese communities. Your friends and family in Lebanon deserve to live in peace, prosperity, and harmony with their neighbors, and that can only happen with peace and stability in the Middle East. I look forward to working with the Lebanese community living in the United States of America to ensure the safety and security of the great people of Lebanon. Vote Trump for Peace!

That's a good statement, and a safe one too. Trump isn't blaming Israel or even discussing the nature of the war itself, only that Lebanon deserves to have its sovereignty restored so that it can live in "peace, prosperity, and harmony." 

Will this pay off for Trump? Positive engagement might dial down some of the distrust in this community, and they may be more open to supporting Trump. But it certainly will drive home the point that Harris and Biden didn't bother to show up in Dearborn and instead paid lip service to their concerns. That might provide an object lesson for other communities, in Michigan and elsewhere.

Will it impact the election? Team Kamala certainly acted like Dearborn mattered, as did Team Biden before her. This week's poll from the Washington Post noted that they couldn't get enough data on Arab-American voters in Michigan because they only make up less than two percent of the population. But the race is close enough in Michigan where small shifts can matter. The current RCP aggregation shows Harris leading by 0.8 points, with a couple of recent polls putting her up by three, four, and five points. 

I'd bet that it's closer than that. And this kind of real engagement could make the difference, which is another reason to wonder why Harris never bothered.