Trump, Harris make furious last-day push through battleground states

A presidential campaign that has careened through an incumbent president being pushed off the ticket, a pair of assassination attempts and complaints of too much "word salad" comes down to a final push across a handful of battleground states on the eve of Election Day.

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

Donald Trump plans four rallies in three states, beginning in Raleigh, North Carolina and stopping twice in Pennsylvania with events in Reading and Pittsburgh. The Republican nominee and former president ends his campaign the way he ended the first two, with a late Monday night event in Grand Rapids, Michigan.

About 77 million Americans already have voted early, but Harris and Trump are pushing to turn out many millions more supporters on Tuesday. Either result on Election Day will yield a historic outcome.

A Trump victory would make him the second president in history to win non-consecutive White House terms, after Grover Cleveland in the late 19th century.

Harris is vying to become the first woman, first Black woman and first person of South Asian descent to reach the Oval Office.

Trump survived by millimeters a would-be assassin’s bullet at a rally in Butler, Pennsylvania. His Secret Service detail foiled a second attempt in September when a gunman had set up a rifle as Trump golfed at one of his courses in Florida.

The vice president was placed at the top of the Democratic ticket after Biden’s disastrous performance in a June debate set into motion his withdrawing from the race. Since then, critics have pointed out her scarcity of press conferences and a lack of challenging interviews or campaign stops in "unfriendly" territory.

Harris has called Trump a threat to democracy and late in the campaign even embraced the critique that Trump is a “fascist.”

Heading into Monday, Harris has mostly stopped mentioning Trump, while reverting back to an optimistic tone reminiscent of her campaign’s opening days when she embraced “the politics of joy” and the campaign theme “Freedom.”

Trump, renewing his “Make America Great Again” and “America First” slogans, has made his hard-line approach to immigration and withering criticisms of Harris and Biden the anchors of his argument for a second administration. He’s hammered Democrats for an inflationary economy, and he’s pledged to lead an economic “golden age,” end international conflicts and seal the U.S. southern border, which he highlights in his closing argument, "Kamala broke it. I will fix it."

The election is likely to be decided across seven states. Trump won Pennsylvania, Michigan and Wisconsin in 2016 only to see them flip to Biden in 2020. North Carolina, Georgia, Arizona and Nevada add the Sun Belt swath of the presidential battleground map.



(AP Photo Alex Brandon)