TRAVERSE CITY, Michigan: Kamala Harris and Donald Trump are battling for holdout votes on a penultimate weekend of campaigning across US swing states, with Michelle Obama joining the Democrat onstage before the Republican nominee hosts an eyebrow-raising rally in New York City.
With just 10 days left in a bitterly contested presidential race, the rivals converge on Saturday (Oct 26) on Michigan, one of the three fiercely-contested “Blue Wall” states – along with Wisconsin and top battleground prize Pennsylvania – that Democrats see as critical to any path to Election Day victory on Nov 5.
Polls show a dead heat in the race’s final days, and with more than 35 million people nationwide already casting early ballots, Americans are deciding whether to elect the country’s first-ever woman president, or its oldest commander-in-chief.
Part of Harris’ strategy is to peel moderate Republicans away from an increasingly vituperative Trump, who continues to demean certain Americans as the “enemy”.
On Friday, he warned that if he wins the White House, people who committed election fraud “will be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the Law, which will include long term prison sentences”.
For Republican AD Jefferson, a 62-year-old labourer attending Harris’ rally in Houston, the Trump turmoil is too much.
“I just think she’s less controversial,” he told AFP. “I’m a Republican, but I feel like Trump is just too chaotic for me.”Fresh off a high-energy rally in Texas with pop icon Beyonce to highlight Republican restrictions on abortion, Harris heads to Kalamazoo, Michigan where she will court voters by drawing on yet more star power, this time deploying one of the Democratic Party’s most popular emissaries: former first lady Michelle Obama.
