TOI correspondent from Washington: Whether American voters believe his story and his promises or their story and his promises, the United States will make history in 2024.
If Trump wins, he would be only the second president to return to the White House for a second term after a four-year hiatus. The last and only president to achieve this feat was Grover Clevelandwho served two non-consecutive termsfrom 1885 to 1889 and from 1893 to 1897.
If Kamala wins, it will make even bigger history: she will be first female president of the United States In 248 years, there have been 46 male presidents, 45 of them pure white. And even more striking: a woman of black and Indian descent with no family political connections who remained single until she was 50.
Neither will happen without a fight that could get rowdy and ugly.
The first signs that this could be a sensitive election with disagreements and disputes that could eventually end up in court came very early, when Trump supporters complained about a malfunction in voting machines in Cambria as voting began on Tuesday morning County in Pennsylvania outraged.
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Although county officials advised voters to place paper ballots in a locked box to be scanned later when the machines were in operation or to be counted by hand, and also obtained a court order allowing them to do so Extending voting times to make up for downtime, conspiracy theorists said, was in full swing — even though Cambria is a deep red county.
Political analysts expect a lot of such wrenches and wrenches to be thrown into the voting and counting process, especially if it turns out that Trump is losing.
Typically, Trump and the Republicans at large take an early lead when vote counts from more sparsely populated, rural, white-dominated counties come first. Democrats are catching up when the numbers from the larger, more populous urban and suburban counties come in. Trump is widely expected to claim victory when he is in the lead and allege “voter fraud” when the lead narrows.
The momentum of Trump's campaign certainly appears to have waned in the last few hours, regardless of the MAGA boom that is expected to lead his base to storm polling stations on Tuesday and “flood the votes,” as he put it.
The MAGA supremo wrapped up his campaign Monday with four rallies in battleground states and ended with one in Michigan that took place after 2 a.m. Tuesday, looking exhausted and tired. Political analysts who have long followed him said he sounded desperate and discouraged, and looked like he was limping to the finish line rather than exuding a strong finishing kick.
Pablo O'Hana, a political adviser to British leaders who attended a rally, described the Trump finale in harsh terms, writing: “The curtains are closing on this tired, unoriginal, boring circus, a fading sideshow that has lost its once hypnotic.” Losing strength.” … a tired ringmaster trying to hold together a fraying show … a jumble of words, an incoherent mess that grew more desperate as the crowd dispersed … a boring, drawn-out circus that… “It promised the thrill of a high. It was a wire act, but delivered the dullness of a retired clown stumbling through a routine.”
Harris, for her part, ended her campaign a little more forcefully in front of the Philadelphia Art Museum – where Sylvester Stallone raced up the steps to train for his boxing match in the iconic scene in the movie Rocky – declaring: “The momentum is on our side.” In one In a spectacular setting in a city that laid the foundation for American democracy, she delivered her standard 20-minute speech, compared to Trump's two-hour effort after Oprah Winfrey and Lady Gaga announced their support.
The United States has never experienced anything like this – neither in terms of presidential candidates nor in electoral campaigns in the age of social media, artificial intelligence, memes and misinformation, effectively a post-truth era. There have been violent campaigns before, but nothing has plumbed the depths of rudeness and vulgarity like this one.
Trump repeatedly painted a bleak and dystopian view of America unless it takes power, calling it an “occupied country” in his final rally. Harris projected an optimistic and positive vision, promising unity and progress in the face of doubts about her abilities. American voters will have their say at the end of the day.
See also:
US presidential election | Trump vs. Kamala Harris | Swing states | Donald Trump