Rivals launch battleground ballots blitz
Target key states in final week
President Trump, Joe Biden and their high-profile allies again fanned out in battleground states across the country Tuesday as Biden’s national polling lead narrowed a week ahead of the election.
Trump held three rallies, in Michigan, Wisconsin and Nebraska, states he swept in 2016 but where he is now in danger.
“It’s a choice between our plan to kill the [coronavirus] or Biden’s plan to kill the American Dream,” Trump told a sprawling crowd in Lansing, Mich., where he spoke outside for more than an hour in 37-degree rain without a hat or umbrella.
First Lady Melania Trump, meanwhile, made her first campaign-trail appearance of the election cycle, one that was short but got right to the point, with a 15minute speech in Pennsylvania, a potentially make-or-break state where her husband held three rallies on Monday.
“Joe Biden’s policies and socialist agenda will only serve to destroy America and all that has been built in the past four years,” said Melania, who was born in Slovenia when it was part of socialist Yugoslavia.
Vice President Mike Pence also did his part for four more years with an event in North Carolina.
Democratic challenger Biden, after days of staying close to his Delaware home, headed to Georgia, where RealClearPolitics’ average of polls shows Trump clinging to a razor-thin lead.
“This place, Warm Springs, is a reminder that though broken, each of us can be healed,” Biden said in the town of some 425 people that a polio-stricken Franklin Delano Roosevelt frequented for its “therapeutic waters.” “That as a people and a country, we can overcome a devastating virus. That we can heal a suffering world. That, yes, we can restore our soul and save our country.”
Former President Barack Obama, under whom Biden served two terms as vice president, held a socially distanced car rally in Orlando, Fla., while California Sen. Kamala Harris, Biden’s running mate, went on the stump in Nevada.
The breakneck schedule for both campaigns came as Biden maintained a healthy lead in the national polls, albeit a bit slimmer than it had been 24 hours earlier.
Biden held an overall 7.4-point edge as of Tuesday afternoon, according to RealClearPolitics’ average of national polls, down from the 7.8-point advantage he enjoyed on Monday.