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Biden and Trump campaign signs are displayed as a line of voters casting their votes during early voting at the Alafaya Branch Library in Orlando, Florida on October 30, 2020. – Trump and Biden are rallying their elders efforts on traditional battlefields that will decide elections, like Florida, where they both campaigned this week. (Photo by Ricardo ARDUENGO / AFP)
DES MOINES, United States – President Donald Trump and challenger Joe Biden fought pitched battles across the American Midwest on Friday, chasing down to the last vote with four days left in a region that propelled the Republican to victory in 2016.
Trump and Biden are each assaulting three heart states, with a resurgent coronavirus surpassing the alarming milestone of nine million cases when they hit the stump, highlighting their differences in a race overshadowed by the pandemic.
Trump, announcing a “big day” of the campaign as he left the White House, held a rally in Michigan before heading to Wisconsin and Minnesota.
“We just want normal,” Trump told supporters, many of them unmasked, at an outdoor “Make America Great Again” rally near Detroit, as he pressured states to relax public health restrictions and resume daily life.
He again opposed the health experts in his own administration by downplaying the Covid-19 threat, saying “if you get it, you’ll get better and then you’ll be immune.”
Covid-19 has killed 230,000 people in the US, which is experiencing worrying waves in most states as the winter flu season threatens to throw kerosene on fire.
The outbreak has devastated the economy, and while there have been signs of recovery, millions are still out of work.
Biden was also stumbling around Wisconsin and Minnesota, after the Democrat’s first stop of the day in Iowa, where he flayed Trump for his handling of the pandemic.
“Donald Trump has given up (and) waved the white flag,” Biden said at a rally with more than 300 cars in Des Moines.
Biden, tailoring his speech to the Iowa crowd, also criticized the president for saying that American farmers were doing better now than when they had a farm, after the Trump administration began paying billions of dollars in subsidies. federal farmers in the middle of a trade war with China. .
Trump turned Iowa, Michigan and Wisconsin over to the Democrats for his shocking victory four years ago. Now polls show Biden leading the way in all three, albeit narrowly in Iowa.
It’s the first time he’s been in Iowa since he began his unfavorable campaign in February, when he finished a dismal fourth in the first Democratic nomination contest.
– Lots of energy’ –
So can Biden win enough voters to prevail in Hawkeye State?
“I wouldn’t put money into it,” Iowa attorney Sara Riley, 61, said at Biden’s drive-in, though she was more confident that he would take over the White House.
“I think Americans, even Trump supporters, want to get to a place where the country is less divided,” Riley said.
With voters concerned about the health dangers of crowded polling stations on November 3, a record 85 million have already cast their early votes by mail or in person.
Even as the United States hit a grim new record for daily Covid-19 infections on Thursday, Trump is standing his ground, downplaying the dangers and calling Democrats furious “socialists” trying to shut down the country.
And while Trump has touted the economic successes of his presidency, including positive GDP figures on Thursday, US stocks closed their worst week since March, highlighting concerns about a shaky economic recovery.
– ‘Make Texas blue?’ –
After a campaign largely muted by the pandemic, Biden is on the offensive, pushing Trump on the defensive in unexpected battlefields like Texas, a large traditionally conservative stronghold now called a pitch by various analysts.
On Friday, the state reported that a staggering nine million residents had already voted, surpassing the 2016 total.
Biden’s running mate Kamala Harris visited Texas on Friday in an attempt to turn the state into a Democrat for the first time since President Jimmy Carter in 1976.
“We have an opportunity to turn Texas blue,” Carter, 96, said in a fundraising email.
Biden to win there would be a dagger to Trump, but the president dismissed the idea when he left the White House, saying, “Texas, we’re doing great.”
Trump and Biden are focusing their greatest efforts on the traditional battlefields that will decide the elections, such as Florida, where they both campaigned on Thursday.
Rejecting Trump’s attacks, Biden argued in Tampa that he would bring in responsible leadership after months of the White House downplaying the virus.
“I am not going to close the economy, I am not going to close the country. I’m going to end the virus, ”he said.
On Saturday, Biden returns to the Midwest bringing with him perhaps his strongest replacement: former President Barack Obama, making their first joint appearance in person in a campaign of the year with his former vice president.
Trump will spend the day campaigning in critical Pennsylvania, where he lags far behind Biden in polls.
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