Only a week before the election “The most important of our lives”, said Tuesday, October 27, former President Barack Obama, who called on Democrats to vote en masse to deprive Donald Trump of a second term, while the Republican President is increasing the number of meetings in the hope of creating a final trend reversal.
While 67 of more than 230 million Americans have already voted (one-third in person and two-thirds by mail), a historic record, Democratic candidate Joe Biden and Donald Trump are each campaigning in states normally taken for granted by Republicans , a sign of the immense challenge raised in front of the president.
From Washington to Las Vegas, via Michigan, Wisconsin and Nebraska: as usual, Donald Trump has planned the busiest day of meetings. His rival will travel only to the state of Georgia, in the conservative South where until recently no one would have considered that Mr. Trump could be beaten.
Navelist and incompetent
But the former real estate mogul, if one relies on the polls which give him the lag, could have nasty surprises on November 3 in some Republican strongholds. Among which one of the three constituencies of Nebraska, which has not voted Democrat since… Barack Obama in 2008.
The latter is back on the stands for the home stretch before the election, and on Tuesday he resumed his scathing indictment against the billionaire, whom he considers navel-gazing and incompetent. “This president claims all the credit for an economy he has inherited, and rejects any responsibility for a pandemic he ignored”, launched Barack Obama in Orlando, Florida, in a new “drive-in” meeting, where the participants were by car.
He once again raised the specter of a repeat of the 2016 election, when Hillary Clinton, ahead in the polls, finally lost to everyone’s surprise. “The last time we rested on our laurels. People were a little lazy, they thought it was a given, and look what happened ”, said Barack Obama.
These words apparently sting Donald Trump, who complained about it just before getting into his helicopter. “He’s on Fox all the time”, noted the president, speaking of Fox News, his channel of predilection.
Undeniable political victory
The Republican billionaire has yet garnered an undeniable political victory the day before: the appointment of conservative judge Amy Coney Barrett to the Supreme Court of the United States has been confirmed by the Senate. At the end of a step-by-step procedure, taking advantage of a Republican senatorial majority threatened with shattering on November 3, the president succeeded in his bet and cemented to the right, possibly for decades, the institution that settles the major social issues in the United States. Mr. Trump has brought three judges to the high court in less than four years, so the Conservative majority has six out of nine seats. The Supreme Court also has the last word in the event of an electoral dispute, a possibility that raises concerns as the president wants to accredit the unfounded thesis of a ballot already marred by large-scale fraud, because of the importance of the vote. by mail.
The last week of the campaign could see a nagging issue back in American society: that of police brutality and racism against the black population, who agitated the country after the death of George Floyd in late May in Minneapolis.
The city of Philadelphia was indeed the scene on the night of Monday to Tuesday of an outbreak of violence, after a 27-year-old African-American suffering from psychological problems was shot dead by police. Police in Pennsylvania’s largest city said the victim was holding a knife. In a statement sent to Agence France-Presse, the security forces claimed to have 30 officers injured in the clashes that followed the homicide.
Recent similar facts, denounced by the movement Black Lives Matter (“The lives of blacks matter”), elicited extremely contrasting responses from MM. Biden and Trump, the former promising measures to stem the injustices suffered by racial minorities, the latter condemning chaos he says orchestrated by Democrats.
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