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.
He also offered a reminder of his wild years as president. He was impervious to facts, routinely ignored economic logic, and showed himself to be steeped in personal grievances and conspiracy theories.
But Trump also showed why he is so compelling to so many voters who believe they have been left behind by an economy run by corporate elites for their own benefit. He posed as a proud populist and made his interviewer, John Micklethwait, the top editor of Bloomberg News, into an avatar of the elite economic establishment. When the British-born journalist said it was “simple mathematics” that tariffs would increase costs for companies and consumers, Trump went on the attack, saying, “You’ve been wrong all your life on this stuff.”
Trump also again refused to disown Russian President Vladimir Putin, to whom he often deferred in office. Asked about Bob Woodward’s reporting that he’d spoken to the autocrat multiple times since leaving the White House, Trump said, “I don’t comment on that. But I will tell you that if I did it’s a smart thing.”
The interview was a classic example of how Trump makes a mockery of truth and has shattered traditional election conventions. He piled up a torrent of falsehoods and digressions that made him impossible to pin down, effectively escaping any kind of accountability.
Later, Trump recorded a Fox News town hall with female voters that will air in full on Wednesday. “I’m the father of IVF, so I want to hear this question,” Trump said during the event taped in Georgia. He added: “We really are the party for IVF. We want fertilization, and it’s all the way, and the Democrats tried to attack us on it, and we’re out there on IVF, even more than them. So, we’re totally in favor.”
Trump has previously proposed making the government or insurance companies pay for IVF treatments – without specifying how. But Harris and the Democrats have been warning that a GOP victory next month would threaten IVF treatments and other reproductive rights in the wake of the Supreme Court’s overturning of the constitutional right to an abortion.
Trump trails Harris among female voters in most polls and badly needs to narrow that gender gap with 20 days to go.
Harris makes belated bid to win Black men
The vice president faces similar challenges among Black men. While this is a cohort that has generally voted for Democrats, there have been signs of erosion in recent cycles — a trend Trump has been working to advance.
But Harris hit back on Charlamagne Tha God’s “The Breakfast Club,” saying that Black voters need to think carefully about the future.
“By voting in this election, you have two choices, or you don’t vote, but you have two choices if you do and it’s two very different visions for our nation,” Harris said, warning as she often does that another Trump presidency would “take us backward.”
And she went further than she has before in categorizing the threat she sees personified by the ex-president, who over the weekend suggested turning the military against “enemies from within.” The show’s host said that one choice represented by Trump is “fascism,” adding, “Why can’t we just say it?”
Harris replied: “Yes, we can say that.”
