HARRY COLE
3 days until America decides… and Donald Trump vs Kamala Harris is still achingly close
Odds-maker Betfair told The Sun that punters are clearly favouring one candidate as the contest goes into the final stretch
THE pollsters would have us believe the battle between Donald Trump and Kamala Harris is so close, it could come down to something as small as an apostrophe.
Like an old drunk shouting on a park bench, Joe Biden has roared back into the White House race in its final furlong for all the wrong reasons.
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In a spectacular glimpse at what a disaster keeping Geriatric Joe as Democratic candidate would have been, him branding Trump supporters “garbage” this week could not have come at a worse time.
After a comic at a Trump rally referred to Puerto Rico as an “island of garbage”, Biden was quoted as saying: “The only garbage I see floating out there is his [Trump’s] supporters.”
But the President and his army of Democrat apologists spun it with a spot of punctuation, saying what he actually meant was: “The only garbage I see floating out there is his supporter’s.”
However, the damage was done and suddenly cackling Kamala was laughing on the other side of her face.
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Pure poison
Leaving aside the fact this guy somehow still has his finger on the nuclear button, and is trying to negotiate peace in the Middle East, politically Biden’s gaffe is pure poison.
Whether he meant it or not, millions of Americans heard him say it.
In a race where the votes of as few as 200,000 of them could swing it either way, even the Democrats’ biggest TV cheerleaders had to admit it was a major cock-up.
A similar 2016 misstep by Hillary Clinton, suggesting Trump voters were “deplorable”, holed her already struggling campaign and concreted Trump’s first path to the White House.
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The problem is, his supporters already think the political and media elites are against them.
And when they appear to say it so blatantly, it unites Trump’s base with a heavy dose of Millwall footie chant: Everyone hates us, but we don’t care.
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The most important thing for both candidates in these final days of the campaign is to keep their bases active, angry and determined to turn out on Tuesday.
Uniting Trump voters under the banner of “garbage” will do just that — and he knows it.
First, I thought the picture of him being shot in the ear, fist in the air, would be the iconic image of this election cycle. Then came his shift in McDonald’s.
However, if Trump does win next week, I think we will all look back at the moment he dressed as a binman in a garbage truck, giving an interview through the open window as casually as Harry Redknapp arriving at the training ground.
The Trump-branded bin lorry campaign stunt, turned around in hours, was one of the most amusing in living memory — and one the Democrats seem unable to counter.
Does all the blame really lie with Biden?
Harry Cole
It could end up as totemic as Boris Johnson driving his JCB through the Brexit brick wall in 2019.
And it similarly feels like a candidate and campaign with the right amount of self-confidence to triumph.
Harris, meanwhile, has retreated to the lefty comfort zone of screaming “fascist” at Trump, praying the abortion issue stirs up enough in the final days to prop her up.
Yet the Biden incident did not happen in a vacuum, with Joe meant to be helping his vice-president by highlighting the comic aiming the “G” word at Puerto Ricans.
Given there are half a million of them living in the key swing state of Pennsylvania, you can see why the Democrats were so keen to get the row going, initially. But is it too little, too late?
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While Trump’s rollercoaster campaign finally seems to be firing properly at the most crucial time, Harris’s efforts appear more akin to poor Rishi Sunak standing in the rain.
But does all the blame really lie with Biden?
If Harris does crash and burn on Tuesday, the post-mortem could be pretty easy — she’s just been a bit rubbish. We can argue Biden bowing out earlier may have given her a better crack of the whip.
However, she didn’t have to adopt his campaign staff and messaging wholesale as she did. And she was most popular when she was saying nothing and not doing interviews in August and September.
Not only has she raised more money than Trump, she has daily adoration from an embarrassing number of slavish US networks. Yet still this race is, as one pollster describes it, “achingly close”.
Scarlett Maguire, of JL Partners, adds: “The momentum in the final few weeks of the campaign has been with Trump.
‘Slender lead’
“It now looks harder for Harris to win the Electoral College through the Sun Belt states of Arizona, Nevada and South Carolina. Instead, her best route will be through the Blue Wall of Pennsylvania, Michigan and Wisconsin.
Even that does not look straightforward. Whilst polling in Michigan and Wisconsin shows Harris with a consistent but slender lead over Trump, Pennsylvania consistently comes back as a dead heat.”
And Betfair’s Sam Rosbottom says punters reckon Harris is blowing this.
He told me last night: “Trump is the favourite in five of the seven key swing states, the pair are neck and neck in the betting in Wisconsin, and the odds have swung in Harris’ favour this week in Michigan.
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“If the punters are spot on, then Trump looks set to win the Electoral College by a substantial margin.”
Not long to go now . . .
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