Harris and Trump throw their last forces into an anxious end to the campaign

Kamala Harris and Donald Trump are throwing their last forces into an anxiety-provoking end to the American presidential campaign on Sunday. ;egrave;ne for the United States and the rest of the world.

The Democratic vice president, who could become the first female president of this country of more than 345 million inhabitants, and the former Republican tenant of the White House, who dreams of returning there, are going head-to-head to convince the undecided, while 75 million voters have cast early ballots.

The campaign to lead the world's leading power on January 20 and succeed outgoing President Joe Biden is the most aggressive in recent US history.

Under the worried gaze of its partners, particularly in Europe and the Middle East, America is split into two camps that seem irreconcilable and are engaged in an escalation of verbal violence where controversies and false information are multiplying.

Posters in support of Donald Trump and Kamala Harris on the facade of a duplex house in Pen Argyl, on November 2, 2024 in Pennsylvania © AFP – SAMUEL CORUM

In this ultra-tense climate, physical violence is feared after November 5.

Especially since the national result is unpredictable as the polls give Mrs. Harris and Mr. Trump a tie.

One of them published Saturday evening caused a stir because it gave the Democrat a three-point lead in the small state of Iowa (north), a Republican stronghold.

– Blue-collar workers to convince –

The vice-president, a former federal magistrate from California born 60 years ago to a Jamaican father and an Indian mother, suddenly entered the campaign in July after the resounding withdrawal of Joe Biden, 81 years old.

Kamala Harris (r) and actress Maya Rudolph participate in the show “Saturday Night Live” on the NBC channel, on November 2, 2024 in New York © AFP – CHARLY TRIBALLEAU

For her last Sunday of campaigning, she returns to Michigan, an industrial pivot state on the shores of the Great Lakes, the birthplace of the automobile industry and with a blue-collar electorate to convince: white, African-American and Arab-Muslim working-class men.

After a church visit to Detroit, Ms. Harris will hold yet another meeting at the state university.

She should also call for “turning the page on a decade with Donald Trump”, a New York real estate billionaire, elected president to general surprise in 2016 and who has shaken up American democracy and international relations.

Dreading his return to the White House, his opponents now portray him as a “dictator”, even a “fascist” with a “vengeful” spirit against all his opponents and critics.

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Former US President Donald Trump campaigns for the presidency in Greensboro, North Carolina, on November 2, 2024 © AFP – CHRISTIAN MONTERROSA

The tireless 78-year-old populist tribune, unsinkable despite numerous criminal and civil convictions and indictments, once again insulted “low-IQ Kamala” on Saturday.

And even if he never stops painting the United States in black, a multicultural giant that is supposedly on the brink of a “1929-style Depression” and “invaded” by millions of “murderous” illegal immigrants, Donald Trump also knows how to be optimistic.

– “New golden age” –

He urged his supporters who came to cheer him in Virginia (east) and North Carolina (southeast) to “dream big again (…) of a new golden age in America.”

The sign of an early voting station in the Bronx borough of New York, November 1, 2024 © AFP – David Dee Delgado

Of the 50 states, only seven this year, the “swing states” and their millions of voters, are expected to swing the election one way or the other the other.

The voting system is complex: presidential candidates are subject to indirect universal suffrage, meaning that Americans vote for a college of 538 electors.

Donald Trump, who returns to the crucial states of Pennsylvania, North Carolina and Georgia on Sunday, is making numerous allegations of “cheating”.

Buildings are secured along Pennsylvania Avenue on November 2, 2024 in Washington, as part of security measures taken in preparation for possible violence following the November 5 election © AFP – Amid Farahi

In Virginia, Brandon Dent, a 22-year-old delivery driver, also believes his champion “will win hands down” but fears that “fraud” could reverse the result.

The former president has never acknowledged his defeat in November 2020 and is facing criminal charges for his role in his supporters' assault on the Capitol, the seat of Congress in Washington, on January 6, 2021.

To prevent any repeat of this unprecedented violence, the federal capital is under high security with a police presence important, barriers and boards to protect the stores.

That did not stop thousands of women from marching Saturday under a blue autumn sky for their rights, first of all the right to abortion, which Kamala Harris wants to reinstate at the federal level.

And in a campaign that costs billions of dollars, where the rallies mix politics and spectacle, Ms. Harris made a surprise appearance in New York on the NBC comedy show “Saturday Night Live.”

With the actress Maya Rudolph who imitated him, they mocked his own laugh that Mr. Trump never ceases to mock with malice.

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