Donald Trump arrives for a campaign rally in Michigan on Sunday
Credit: Reuters
Most 74-year-olds who a month ago were connected to oxygen as their vital signs wavered while battling Covid-19 would likely be sheltering in their own four walls right now.
But Donald Trump, his political career hanging in the balance, braved temperatures hovering around freezing yesterday during a frantic five-state dash to drive up support before the polls close.
"Does anyone have a coat I could wear?” the US president joked on stage in Washington, Michigan, before a crowd in bobble hats and MAGA masks as snowflakes fell. #
Stops in the battlegrounds of Iowa, North Carolina, Georgia and Florida were also scheduled on Sunday, with five more rallies on Monday. The blitz of presidential activity in the last 48 hours of campaigning – back-dropped with throngs of Trump supporters cheering wildly while ignoring social distancing – has Democrats hand-wringing.
Their candidate Joe Biden’s central message of taking the coronavirus pandemic seriously means attendee numbers at his events are tightly limited. Often ‘drive-in’ rallies sees Biden supporters stay in cars. The set-up reinforces their ‘safety-first’ message that they see as the key to victory. #
But it means that the traditional footage of vast numbers of supporters cheering on a candidate – used to project momentum – is missing. It has fed into an outbreak of jitters this weekend as the last day of voting approaches on Tuesday.
Above all the ghost of 2016 haunts Democrats, reminding them that the polls can be wrong. Could Mr Biden be doing more events? Is his campaign doing enough to turn out African-American and Latino voters? Are the polls again under-counting Trump supporters?
The Democratic nerves were sent through the roof on Saturday night when Iowa’s most trusted pollster Ann Selzer put Mr Trump seven points ahead in the state, which previously she had down as neck-and-neck. That is the same margin Ms Selzer put Mr Trump ahead there just before the 2016 election.
It was later taken as an indicator of the sweep he managed to pull off in once-Democrat Midwestern states. Calmer heads on the Democrat side point to Mr Biden’s sizable poll leads in the swing states, which are generally bigger than those Hillary Clinton had four years ago.
But the president’s defiant predictions of victory, along with signs that his campaign has driven up registrations among Republican supporters in key states, have been noted.
“Our numbers are looking VERY good all over,” Mr Trump tweeted this weekend. “Sleepy Joe is already beginning to pull out of certain states. The Radical Left is going down!”
On stage in Washington, Michigan, yesterday, the president, wearing black gloves for the cold and a red Make America Great Again cap, touted his record in office. “I gave you a lot of auto plants”, the president told the crowd, a claim challenged by fact-checkers PolitiFact who noted in 2019 auto industry jobs in the state dropped by 3,000.
He also mocked Mr Biden’s trademark aviator sunglasses. “They’re too small, they should be bigger”, Mr Trump said, calling his rival “a dummy and a half”.
The president’s appearances in the so-called Rust Belt states, named for the abandoned factories that dot America’s Midwest, are a reminder of the upset Mr Trump achieved in 2016.
It was his success in wooing blue collar Democrats with an anti-globalisation message that saw him flip Pennsylvania, Michigan and Wisconsin, handing him the White House. Mr Biden is determined to win the states back. His triumph in the Democratic primaries was in part because as a 77-year-old white man from Scranton, Pennsylvania, he was seen as well-placed to do just that.
And this weekend the former US vice president was joined by his old boss, Barack Obama, on the campaign trail, delivering joint speeches for the first time this election cycle. The scene of the Obama-Biden reunion was a drive-in rally at Northwestern High School on the outskirts of Flint, Michigan, a struggling former car manufacturing hub known as "Vehicle City”.
Barack Obama and Joe Biden campaign together in Flint, Michigan
Credit: AP
Mr Obama bounded on to stage on Saturday and set the Democrat faithful alight, both in Flint, and at a similar event hours later outside a casino in Detroit. "We love you," the crowd yelled. "I love you too,” Mr Obama yelled back. “Honk if you’re fired up!”
The former president did not “go high,” as his wife has advised Democrats to do. Instead, he castigated Mr Trump, dismissing him as a "reality TV star," who was "phony macho," and "obsessed with crowd sizes.”
"He’s still worrying about his inauguration crowd being smaller than mine. It really bugs him,” Mr Obama said. "Does he have nothing better to worry about? Did no one come to his birthday party when he was a kid? Was he traumatised? Is Fox News not giving him enough attention?"
Fans waved their flags wildly for the former president, honked their car horns, and generally screamed like they were at a pop concert. "I’m his secret girlfriend, he just doesn’t know it," gushed supporter Heather Jakeway, 47. "Having Obama here is awesome. Blue wave baby!"
Democrats do not react this way to their current nominee. And if this first joint appearance of the campaign made anything clearer, it was that Joe Biden is no Barack Obama.
To his credit Mr Biden appears well aware of this. After Mr Obama introduced him, he shook his head and said: "I tell you what, didn’t it make you a little nostalgic, just hearing him?”
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The finish line of this tumultuous and combative campaign is now in sight. Polls close on Tuesday evening. A record-breaking turnout is expected. But much else remains cloudy. Should the results be tight, America is braced for days of wrangling with legal challenges likely.
The huge surge in mail-in votes on account of the pandemic means that some state officials have warned results may not be declared in their states for days, given counting of postal ballots can take longer.
Polling studies show that while a much higher proportion of Democrats will be voting by mail, the reverse is true for in-person voting, with many more Republicans likely to vote on Tuesday. That has raised fears that if close Mr Trump could demand that the election night count, when he could be artificially high because many postal ballots are yet to be counted, should be taken as the final result.
Jason Miller, a senior Trump campaign adviser, hinted at that strategy on Sunday, saying in a TV interview that he believed the president will "be ahead on election night" and that the Democrats will "try to steal it back” afterwards.
That controversial framing of the count ignores the fact that it is normal and legitimate for postal ballots which are submitted before polls close to be tallied in the days afterwards. In cities across the country, from San Francisco on the West coast to Washington DC and New York in the East, the windows of shops in downtown areas are being boarded up.
The luxury department chain Nordstrom and jewellery brand Tiffany’s are closing some stores in anticipation of possible street demonstrations. Texas is preparing to deploy 1,000 members of the National Guard. The campaigning may almost be over, but America is bracing for Tuesday and what comes next.
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