Kamala Harris has a problem and it's called Gaza

Clare is Trump country.

So too are Wexford, Antrim and Roscommon.

These rural counties of Michigan voted by two-to-one for Donald Trump over Biden in the 2020 Presidential election.

Joe Biden went on to win the state by 50.6% to 47.8%. Mr Trump had won the state in 2016, Barack Obama before that. So it was a swing state, fought over intensively by the two parties: and it still is.

Mr Biden won because he won in the counties that contain the biggest cities, notably those around Detroit, in the southeast of the state.

Kamala Harris is also hoping to win this state in the urban and suburban areas in the southeast.

However she has a problem, and it's called Gaza.

Michigan is home to America's biggest Arab-American population. Like many others they came for work in the automobile industry, situated around Detroit - America's "motor city".

Most of them are concentrated in the city of Dearborn, home of the Ford Motor company.

And this population - usually inclined to vote more Democrat than Republican - has been shocked by the situation in the Middle East, and has been moved to protest the support the Biden-Harris administration has given to Israel.

In the Democrat Primary in February, when Mr Biden was still the candidate, he lost Dearborn, a city of 110,000, to "Uncommitted", a sort of none-of-the-above choice on the ballot for those who did not like him or the other Democratic Party candidates, and who wanted to protest.

Uncommitted beat Mr Biden 56% to 40% in Dearborn. Uncommitted won delegates to the Democratic National Convention in Chicago, where they were not given speaking time on the floor. By then the party nominee was Kamala Harris.

Now, after a year of war in Israel and Gaza, the fighting has spread to Lebanon.

"Working on the new Middle East by bombing my people? I will not approve of that. My vote will not approve of that."

We travelled to Dearborn, where Lebanese are the biggest group in the Arab community, to sample the mood of this city which, in a very tight election race, could end up being very influential in determining the outcome of the presidential election in this state, and the 16 Electoral College votes that come with winning this "Blue Wall" state.

We met Sam Hamoun in his Lebanese restaurant, Sahara. The TV set above the service counter is playing a Lebanese news channel, bringing live reporting from night time Beirut on the latest airstrikes.

Sam told us that for the first time in 20 years of voting, he is thinking of abstaining on 5 November.

"I might sit out this election. My family might sit out this election, unless something happens in the next couple of weeks.

"But we're leaning towards sitting out this election because Donald Trump doesn't want a ceasefire. Donald Trump comes out and says 'none of this would have happened...' If Donald came out and said 'Hey, I get elected this war stops the next day' - you got my vote.

"Kamala? Forget about Kamala. She's funding genocide. She's funding every country outside the US.

"And she's trying to say we're working on a new Middle East. Working on the new Middle East by bombing my people? I will not approve of that. My vote will not approve of that."

Sam tells me his 79-year-old father, who built up the family business in the US, is stuck in Lebanon - his Beirut apartment destroyed in an air raid.

A US citizen, one of 89,000 waiting to get a flight out, his family just want him back home in America.

"I'm going to be voting third party, Green Party. Even if they don't win, I know it's going to send out a message."

Personal stories abound. It's the nature of a small place like Lebanon or Gaza - with a significant diaspora in the US - that people have relatives or friends who are directly affected by the war.

Republicans making new ground ahead of November showdown

Faye Nemer is Chief Executive of the Middle East and North Africa Chamber of Commerce in Dearborn.

"My cousin's six-year-old daughter and his mother were killed in an Israeli strike on southern Lebanon. So we're dealing with the traumatic aftermath of that. He's currently in the hospital.

"He sustained life threatening injuries, so you know, we're waiting to determine, you know, if he's still going to be around for the rest of his children." That was two and a half weeks ago.

She tells me about grassroots movements organising a protest vote among the Arab and Muslim communities in Michigan.

"In terms of the sentiments of the community, they're either skipping the top of the ticket (i.e. abstaining in the Presidential ballot) or voting US Green Party.

"They realise that there's a duopoly that's currently in place, whether it's the Democratic Party or the Republican Party, and the intention is to at least garner enough support for Dr Jill Stein (Presidential candidate of the US Green Party) so that she's able to garner 5% of The public support."

Of the grassroots movement she says: "They don't feel like the Democratic Party has delivered on their commitments, whether it's the Arab agenda that was communicated to President Biden back in 2020, and looking forward, there hasn't been a meaningful engagement and outreach from the Harris campaign to put forth practical steps towards a de-escalation of the violence in the Middle East.

"Rather, we've been seeing quite the contrary, an escalation and a widening of the violence, and the spillover of the aggression into neighbouring countries."

For business consultant Tima Maloum, supporting the Green Party is about sending a message - that neither the republicans nor democrats are listening to Arab-Americans and Muslims about the Middle East. She used to vote democrat.

"I'm going to be voting third party, Green Party. Even if they don't win, I know it's going to send out a message: the more people realise that our votes can sway things in either direction, I think they'll start listening."

Ms Stein is credited by some election analysts with having drawn away enough votes from Hilary Clinton in the 2016 election to have cost her Michigan, Wisconsin and Pennsylvania, the "Blue Wall" states, and with them the Presidency.

"It's about sending a message that neither one of them is who we want. They stand for things that don't align with what the people want."

Mr Trump's winning margin was lower than Ms Stein’s share of the vote. She didn't stand in 2020, giving Joe Biden a clearer path to his narrow victory.

Now that she is back in the race, an organised campaign to send her protest votes from those concerned about the war in the Middle East (which includes quite a number in the black community as well) could draw votes away from Ms Harris.

Two or three percentage points could sway the outcome in Michigan.

So why not just vote for Donald Trump, I ask her?

"If we were to vote for Trump, you're just voting for another person that you don't want to support. It's not about voting for one or the other.

"It's about sending a message that neither one of them is who we want. They stand for things that don't align with what the people want."

As a former Democrat supporter, is she not worried that by voting Green she will get Trump?

"We're going to get one or the other regardless, right? That's what the numbers say. So it's not about it causing Trump to win or Harris to win - it's about sending a message."

Mr Trump too has his supporters in the Arabic community here. Among them is Albert Abbas, another restaurateur, though his places specialise in modern American food.

"I would rather take my chances with Donald Trump the next four years than with Kamala, because actions speak louder than words, and I just feel like with him, we had four years of no new wars.

"So I'm going to give him the benefit of the doubt today than I would with Kamala, taking the next four years - because I just feel like that could be really bad for all of us."

"I'm probably going to take my chances on the republican side, because how much worse can it possibly get than this?"

Albert says he generally feels closer to the Republican Party on a broad range of issues, socially and economically. Yet he also feels part of a community that feels cut adrift in American politics.

"I believe that we feel like we have no voice anymore. You know, one party talks about sending us back, and another party gives us a seat at the table, as long as we keep our mouths shut.

"And so we feel even with the Democratic Party, you know, they've given us many seats at the table in terms of local, state and federal government.

"However, these voices that we count on to speak up for our concerns as Arab Americans, to speak up for our homelands and their rights to persevere and have the same basic human rights that every other person in the world should have - It feels like we've been silenced in that respect.

"And then with the Republican Party, it seems like there's a lot of misinformation on how, as an Arab American, specifically a Muslim Arab American, that we are so much alike.

"And we have so much in common with our Christian brothers and sisters around the world. Yet here, with Western media, they portray us in such a bad light that sometimes it leaves us wondering are we ever going to be accepted for who we are.

"So we're kind of lost right now. Do we vote democratic and continue with what's going on in the Middle East, which seems to be the highest priority today? That's the tough one - because we're watching our own families being burnt alive over there. Or do we vote Republican?

"Personally, for me, I'm probably going to take my chances on the republican side, because how much worse can it possibly get than this?"

A Muslim community of some 240,000 people, dismay in the black community over the war in the Middle East, black men less inclined to vote for a woman (as Barack Obama pointed out and chided them for last week), and thousands of car industry workers in 'Motor City' concerned about losing their jobs in engine and transmission plants because of the push to electric vehicles.

And a viable third party candidate to coalesce around for those who might say a plague on both the big party houses, and it's not hard to see why the Democrat and Republican candidates are working this state so hard.