Democratic US presidential candidate Hillary Rodham Clinton and her Republican rival Donald Trump on Thursday squared off in do-or-die North Carolina with dueling rallies — and some star power in the Democrat’s camp — as the bitter US presidential race continues to narrow in the home stretch.
As the candidates jostle for supremacy in the handful of battleground states that will decide Tuesday’s election, two of the biggest prizes on the electoral map, Florida and North Carolina, are absolute dead heats, according to RealClearPolitics poll aggregates.
Clinton unleashed top surrogates, including US President Barack Obama, to bolster her case in a final push, while billionaire Trump deployed his wife, Melania Trump, to soften the brash Republican’s image.
Photo: AFP
North Carolina was suddenly in the eye of the political storm, with the candidates frantically criss-crossing the southeastern state where they are locked at 46.4 percent apiece.
The candidates’ motorcades even passed one another on the tarmac at the Raleigh-Durham airport ahead of their rival rallies.
“You’ve got to get everyone you know to come out and vote,” Clinton implored supporters in Raleigh, where she was joined by her one-time primary adversary US Senator Bernie Sanders and Happy singer Pharrell Williams.
“The best way to repudiate the bigotry and the bluster and the bullying and the hateful rhetoric and discrimination is to show up with the biggest turnout in American history,” she said.
Williams, dressed in a hoodie, sought to pump up black voter turnout — crucial to Clinton’s White House aspirations — which is down in early voting in several states from four years ago.
“For my culture, I know they sometimes call us minority, but you see our influence everywhere, we are not minority, we are majority,” he said. “We’re black! Beautiful! So if you’ve ever been called a minority ever in your life... go out and vote and show everybody that you’re actually really the majority.”
Obama shuttled into Florida for fiery rallies aimed at turning out the Democratic base for Clinton in a must-win state for Trump, who is under pressure to snatch battleground states and even poach one or two Democratic strongholds if he is to prevail.
A CBS/New York Times survey showed Clinton’s lead shrinking to 3 points, at 45 percent against Trump’s 42 percent, a sign he is winning over once-wary Republican voters.
After months of vitriolic and turbulent campaigning, political tribalism appears to be returning to the fore in the deeply divided nation ahead of election day.
“This will be a close race and you cannot take it for granted,” Obama warned supporters in Jacksonville, painting an apocalyptic vision of what Trump would mean for US democracy.
Clinton added to the portrayal, telling North Carolinians that “if Donald Trump were to win this election we would have a commander-in-chief who is completely out of his depth and whose ideas are incredibly dangerous.”
Clinton’s running mate, US Senator Tim Kaine, visited the border state of Arizona, making a play for Hispanic voters by delivering a speech entirely in Spanish.
Clinton’s last stand is to come in Philadelphia on the eve of the election for a joint rally where she is to be joined by husband former US president Bill Clinton, Obama and this year’s most potent campaigner, first lady Michelle Obama.
Pennsylvania is clearly a firewall for Clinton; a Trump win there would be a giant step toward his becoming the 45th president.
Melania Trump, the Slovenian-born former model who could become the US’ first foreign-born first lady in two centuries, on Thursday also chose Pennsylvania for her first solo campaign appearance.
“He certainly knows how to shake things up, doesn’t he?” she said of Trump’s incendiary campaign.
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