Three days out, Trump and Clinton add emergency campaign stops

WILMINGTON, United States – Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton raced to add last minute campaign stops Saturday, November 5, scrambling for votes in the final 3 days of a White House race that has the world on edge.

Clinton’s camp mocked Trump’s scatter-shot 10-states-in-3-days approach to the electoral map, claiming that the Republican property tycoon was grasping at straws.

But the 69-year-old former secretary of state herself added an extra stopover in Michigan, a state that should be safely hers, suggesting the race may be closer than either side admits.

Whether or not he is feeling the pressure, the 70-year-old billionaire populist’s rhetoric remained triumphalist.

“We are just three days from the change you have been waiting for your entire life!” Trump declared in Wilmington, North Carolina, where he and his wife Melania fired up thousands of raucous supporters.

He hit his key themes: promises to tear up free trade agreements, expel undocumented migrants, rebuild an allegedly depleted US military and purge Washington of corruption.

And his fans roared back the same three-word chants: “Build the wall,” “Drain the swamp,” “Lock her up.” But those chanting were already Trump voters.

After Florida and North Carolina, Trump was headed for Nevada later Saturday and on Sunday to Iowa, Minnesota, Michigan, Pennsylvania and Virginia. 

On Monday, the eve of polling day, he will head back to Florid, North Carolina and Pennsylvania — then on for a grand finale in New Hampshire.

Clinton’s campaign manager Robby Mook was scathing, telling reporters: “It looks like he’s just trying to go everywhere all at once.”

Mook argued that Trump’s packed schedule was sign of panic that he has failed to break through into Democratic territory.

But Clinton’s late decision to head to Michigan on Monday and to add a midnight rally in North Carolina as Monday shades into election day raised eyebrows.

Mook dismissed suggestions that Clinton is bidding to shore up her crumbling firewall in the north, and predicted she would overturn Trump’s opinion poll lead in Florida.

“Donald Trump has to win all of these battleground races,” he said. “If we win Pennsylvania and Florida, he just has no path.”

The campaigns’ claims and counterclaims resound far beyond the United States.     

America’s allies are fearful that a candidate who has threatened to review US treaty alliances is within striking distance of the White House. 

And foes like Russia and Iran have not hidden their mirth at the turmoil rocking US democracy.

Global markets fear an inexperienced demagogue with a protectionist bent could plunge the United States or even the world economy back into recession.

 

– Narrow advantage –

 

The polls are unclear. Clinton, the 69-year-old former secretary of state, senator and first lady, still enjoys a narrow nationwide advantage, a two percentage point lead according to a poll average by tracker RealClearPolitics.

But the election will be won or lost in the US electoral college, and here perhaps a dozen key states are in play. Trump’s camp believes it can pick off enough of them to push him over the 270 electoral vote threshold on November 8.  

Trump’s campaign has been torpedoed and holed but not yet sunk by allegations of sexual assault and the candidate’s own off-color outbursts.

Meanwhile, the long-running saga of Clinton’s inappropriate use of a private email server — fed by announcements and leaks from FBI investigators — continues to cast a cloud over her pitch as the competent professional. 

But as the race comes down to the wire, she has tried to pierce through the pessimism with a more upbeat message, bringing in heavyweight support from President Barack Obama and global megastars like singer Beyonce and her rapper husband Jay-Z.

Rain put a dampener on her early rally in Pembroke Pines, Florida, but she was determined to build on the high of the previous night’s musical spectacular in Ohio, where Beyonce helped her champion diversity and female empowerment. 

“We are seeing tremendous momentum, large numbers of people turning out, breaking records in a lot of places,” she declared, in reference to the early and mail voting permitted in several US states.

“Let’s vote for the future!” she added through the downpour, urging those who had already cast their ballots to mobilize to get their friends to the polls.

Earlier, at an event in Miami, her supporters had launched into a three-word get out the vote chant of their own: “Knock on doors! Knock on doors!”

Polling and anecdotal evidence suggests that Clinton supporters, in particular previously underrepresented Latino voters, have come out strongly in Nevada and Florida.

 

– Impossible breakthrough –

 

Both Nevada and Florida were won by Clinton’s fellow Democrat Obama in 2012, but had been leaning towards Trump. Respected forecasters FiveThirtyEight’s still give Trump a slight edge in both in polling averages.

Yet the group’s “polls plus” forecast — incorporating economic and historical data — now has Clinton as a “relatively safe” winner in Nevada.

A loss in Florida, with its 29 electoral votes, would all but doom Trump’s chances, while his hopes for victory rest on an unlikely but now not impossible breakthrough in one of the Democratic-leaning states in the north, like Pennsylvania.

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