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Harris and Trump will both make a furious push in the final day before Election Day
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Harris and Trump will both make a furious push in the final day before Election Day

WASHINGTON — A presidential campaign that has gone through a murder trial, an incumbent president being kicked off the ticket and multiple assassination attempts is coming down to a final push in a handful of states on the eve of Election Day.

Kamala Harris will spend all day Monday in Pennsylvania, whose 19 electoral votes offer the largest prize among the states expected to determine the outcome of the Electoral College. The vice president and Democratic nominee will tour working-class areas, including Allentown, and conclude with a late-night rally in Philadelphia that includes Lady Gaga and Oprah Winfrey.

Donald Trump is planning four rallies in three states, starting in Raleigh, North Carolina and making two stops in Pennsylvania, with events in Reading and Pittsburgh. The Republican candidate and former president ends his campaign the way he ended the first two, with an event late Monday night in Grand Rapids, Michigan.

Some 77 million Americans have already voted early, but Harris and Trump are pushing to get millions more supporters on Tuesday. Any result on election day will have a historic outcome.

A Trump victory would make him the first president to be indicted and convicted of a misdemeanor after his hush money trial in New York. He will gain the power to end other pending federal investigations against him. Trump would also become the second president in history to win non-consecutive terms in the White House, after Grover Cleveland in the late 19th century.

Harris is vying to become the first woman, the first black woman and the first person of South Asian descent to reach the Oval Office, four years after she broke the same barriers to national office by becoming President Joe Biden’s second-in-command.

The vice president rose to the top of the Democratic ticket after Biden’s disastrous performance in a June debate set in motion his withdrawal from the race. This was just one of a series of convulsions that hit this year’s campaign.

Republican presidential candidate former President Donald Trump reflects on…

Former President Donald Trump, Republican presidential nominee, is reflected in bulletproof glass as he finishes speaking at a campaign rally in Lititz, Pennsylvania, Sunday, Nov. 3, 2024. Credit: AP/Matt Rourke

Trump narrowly escaped an alleged assassin’s bullet at a rally in Butler, Pennsylvania. His Secret Service detail foiled a second attempt in September, when a gunman pointed a rifle while Trump was playing golf at one of his Florida courses.

Harris, 60, played down the historic nature of his candidacy, which materialized only after the 81-year-old president ended his re-election bid after his June debate against Trump, aged 78, heightened questions about Biden’s age.

Instead, Harris presented himself as a generational changer, emphasized his support for abortion rights after the Supreme Court’s 2022 decision ending the constitutional right to abortion services, and regularly noted the former president’s role in the Jan. 6 attack on US Capitol. Assembling a coalition ranging from progressives like Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York to former Republican Vice President Dick Cheney, Harris called Trump a threat to democracy and late in the campaign even accepted the criticism that Trump is accurately described as “fascist”. .”

As of Monday, Harris stopped mentioning Trump. She promises to resolve issues and seek consensus while striking an almost exclusively upbeat tone that recalls the early days of her campaign, when she embraced the “politics of joy” and the campaign theme of “Freedom.”

Supporters listen as Republican presidential candidate former President Donald Trump…

Supporters listen as Republican presidential candidate former President Donald Trump speaks at a campaign rally at the Kinston Jet Center on Sunday, Nov. 3, 2024, in Kinston, NC Credit: AP/Julia Demaree Nikhinson

“From the very beginning, our campaign hasn’t been about being against something, it’s been about being for something,” Harris said Sunday night at Michigan State University.

Trump, renewing his “Make America Great Again” and “America First” slogans, has made his tough approach to immigration and sharp criticism of Harris and Biden the anchors of his case for a second administration. He blasted Democrats for an inflationary economy and pledged to lead an economic “golden age,” end international conflict, and seal the US’s southern border.

But Trump has often returned to grudges to be prosecuted after trying to overturn Biden’s victory and has repeatedly denigrated the country he wants to lead again as a “failed nation.” As early as Sunday, he renewed false claims that the US election was rigged against him, weighed in on violence against journalists and said he “shouldn’t have left” the White House in 2021 — dark turns that overshadowed another anchor of his closing argument. : “Kamala broke it. I will fix it.”

Elections are likely to be decided in seven states. Trump won Pennsylvania, Michigan and Wisconsin in 2016 only to see them go back to Biden in 2020. North Carolina, Georgia, Arizona and Nevada add to the Sun Belt area of ​​the presidential battleground map.

Trump won North Carolina twice and lost Nevada twice. He won Arizona and Georgia in 2016, but saw them slip to Democrats in 2020.

Harris’ team has projected his confidence in recent days, pointing to a wide gender gap in early voting data and research showing late-deciding voters broke his path. They also believe in the strength of their campaign infrastructure. This weekend, the Harris campaign had more than 90,000 volunteers help turn out voters — and knocked on more than 3 million doors in battleground states. However, Harris’ aides insisted she remains unfavored.

Trump’s team also projected confidence, arguing that the former president’s populist appeal would attract younger and working-class voters across racial and ethnic lines. The point is that Trump can assemble an atypical Republican coalition even as other traditional blocs of the GOP — particularly college-educated voters — turn more Democratic.