Donald Trump is trying to bob and weave his way back to power while Kamala Harris is finally daring to ditch the script as Democrats fret about her campaign.
The Republican and Democratic nominees on Tuesday offered voters an unusually self-reflective glimpse into their characters as they pursued dwindling bands of undecided voters in their neck-and-neck race that’s coming down to the wire.
Trump, fresh off a bizarre half-hour at a town hall on Monday when he danced on stage to his campaign soundtrack, made a clumsy attempt to repair his damaged standing among female voters. “I’m the father of IVF,” said the former president whose conservative Supreme Court majority unleashed chaos in reproductive health care.
And in a testy appearance at the Economic Club of Chicago, he made a virtue of his frequent incoherence, styling it as a sophisticated “weave” of multiple ideas that only a political genius would attempt. And he tried a fresh reinvention of history over his attempt to steal the 2020 election, declaring that his crowd in Washington on January 6, 2021, was infused with “love and peace.”
Harris faces some tough questions
Harris also sought a second chance among a key voting bloc that is cool on her campaign. As she seeks to become the first Black woman president, she courted Black male voters who were last week rebuked by former President Barack Obama for flirting with Trump. In an interview with radio host Charlamagne Tha God, the vice president further sharpened her attacks on her rival, branding him as “weak” because he cozies up to dictators and agreeing with the host that his political creed equated to “fascism.”
While Trump flaunted his rambling rhetorical style, Harris rejected suggestions she’s too scripted. “That would be called discipline,” Harris said in the radio interview.
But as Democrats panic about Trump’s possible return to the White House, Harris is starting to embrace more spontaneous events.
She took the rare step of answering questions in the town-hall style radio program — and got some tough ones about her commitment to the Black church and Black voters’ economic problems. On Wednesday, Harris will venture into the lion’s den on Fox News hoping to reach another important group of voters. The appearance on the pro-Trump network is part of her attempt to give Republicans disaffected with the ex-president a reason to vote Democrat.
With Trump trying to repair his deficit among women and Harris belatedly trying to shore up support among Black men, the battle for the world’s most powerful political job is looking less like a test of strength than a struggle between two candidates who know mitigating their weaknesses may be the key to victory.
With swing-state polls deadlocked, the election could come down to a few thousand votes in a handful of battlegrounds, leaving both Harris and Trump trawling for people who agree with them but who often don’t vote.
Stunning scenes in Georgia
This election has been a tale of unexpected events, featuring a convicted felon who survived two assassination attempts, an aging president who ditched his bid for a second term a few months before Election Day, and a vice president handed an 11th hour mission to save the White House from a rival who Democrats see as a wannabe tyrant.But the extraordinary stakes of what lies ahead — and the power of democracy — were laid bare on Tuesday in the most emphatic way as over 300,000 voters in the key battleground of Georgia showed up on the first day of early voting and broke a record. In recent races in the Peach State, heavy turnout would be a good sign for Democrats. But despite Trump’s insistence that all voting should take place on Election Day, the GOP has been pleading with its voters to turn up early, so it’s too soon to draw any conclusions about who is showing up.
Gabriel Sterling — the chief operating officer for Georgia’s secretary of state, who played a key role in debunking Trump’s election falsehoods four years ago — argued that democracy was alive and well in his state. “For those that claimed Georgia election laws were Jim Crow 2.0 and those that say democracy is dying…the voters of Georgia would like to have a word,” he said.
Trump shows his risks and his appeal
In Chicago, Trump demonstrated exactly what he would bring to the Oval Office in a second term, promising an aggressive program to punish countries and companies with a draconian regime of tariffs.
