With only half a month left, the US presidential election is at a stalemate, with Kamala Harris and Donald Trump looking to gain some advantage by highlighting their clear political differences. While Democratic candidates just recently announced plans to campaign with the Obamas, Republican candidates are doubling down on intimidating their opponents.
Last week, President Trump went further than ever to label his political opponents as “the enemy within” and talk about deploying the military, while Harris herself finally agreed to label Trump a “fascist” and entered uncharted territory. I entered.
The latest poll numbers appear to reflect this sharply polarized rhetoric, with seven key battleground states splitting loyalties almost down the middle.
In a particularly graphic example, a Brookings Institution/Public Religion Research Institute poll released Friday found that more than a third (34%) of voters agreed that one of President Trump’s most incendiary claims It was shown that he agrees that immigrants “taint the blood” of America. Rhetoric that draws comparisons to Hitler and warns of impending fascism.
Evidence that such warnings have not hurt Republican candidates electorally comes from the Guardian’s latest 10-day poll tracker. As of October 16, the national poll showed Harris leading by just two points, 48% to 46%, which is unchanged from a week ago and compared to a few weeks ago. The difference was significantly smaller.
Races in battleground states Pennsylvania, Michigan, Wisconsin, North Carolina, Georgia, Nevada and Arizona are even closer, with each number within the margin of error.
In Michigan and North Carolina, the pair is tied and within a statistical margin of error. In the latter state, early voting began Thursday at 400 sites as damage from last month’s Hurricane Helen continues to be cleaned up, an operation marked by lies and misinformation by Mr. Trump and his allies. Ta.
Harris has narrow leads in Pennsylvania and Nevada, and Trump has leads in Arizona, Georgia and North Carolina, but the race remains too close to predict with certainty.
With Harris vying for a key advantage, Barack and Michelle Obama announced Friday that they will campaign with her next week. It will be the former first lady’s first public appearance since August, when she gave a much-lauded speech skewering Trump at the Democratic National Convention.
The uncertainty surrounding the election outcome seems even more pronounced, especially in a race that has had several moments of clarity over the past week.
One was last Saturday, when Trump spoke darkly about the “enemy within” in a speech at Coachella, Calif., that Harris was sure to highlight. He applied this description to Democratic Rep. Adam Schiff. He repeated this riff the next day in a Fox News interview with a friendly host, suggesting that the military and National Guard should be deployed against instigators who would cause “chaos” on Election Day, but that they were not his own. He emphasized that it was not his responsibility. side.
This line seemed to give Harris an opening. At a rally in Erie, Pennsylvania, last Monday night, she called President Trump “unfaithful” while playing footage of the Republican candidate’s most extreme public remarks to the audience in what was seen as an unusual political innovation. He accepted the label “stable and free-spirited.”
In a moment of disconcerting levity, President Trump took to the stage swaying to his favorite song after two medical emergencies interrupted an event at City Hall near Philadelphia at about the same time. Ta.
Instead of continuing with the Q&A, he requested a playlist that included James Brown, Luciano Pavarotti and Guns N’ Roses, and urged those gathered to listen and dance along for the next 40 minutes.
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Ms. Harris’ campaign sought to highlight the episode as further evidence that Mr. Trump is unfit for public office and appears to be in poor mental health.
The next day, the vice president went further, agreeing with Charlamagne tha God’s opinion that President Trump’s vision amounted to “fascism” in an interview on a black radio station in Detroit.
“Yes, I can say that,” she said, though she never actually uttered the word that others have applied to Trump, including former Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Mark Milley, who called him a “fascist.” I avoided it. core”.
The wide gulf between the two candidates was further highlighted by their contrasting appearances at two Fox News events on Wednesday.
Mr. Trump attended an all-female town hall meeting with the goal of attracting female voters, who polls show is far behind Ms. Harris. In a comment that once again provided fodder for Democratic ridicule, he declared himself the “father of in vitro fertilization.” In vitro fertilization is a form of infertility treatment that Senate Republicans voted against earlier this year. CNN later reported that Republican women’s groups had arranged for the audience to be filled with Trump supporters.
Harris’ combative interview with Fox’s Bret Bayer was widely seen as a successful example of tapping into enemy territory by tapping into a right-wing network that vocally supports Trump.
But despite, or perhaps because of, these vastly different circumstances, polls show voters remain entrenched in their positions, and in the coming weeks will see a boost from running late. There is a strong possibility that both sides will fight desperately for independent or undecided electors. A voting initiative targeting the less motivated sections of each location.
