A Grim Trump and an Upbeat Harris End the Race Hitting Opposite Notes
The New York Times
The moods and messages were more different than ever as the presidential rivals made one last scramble through battleground states, their ambitions riding heavily on Pennsylvania.
Donald J. Trump and Kamala Harris closed out their campaigns on Monday in starkly different moods: The former president, appearing drained at arenas that were not filled, claimed that the country was on the brink of ruin, while the vice president promised a more united future as energized supporters chanted alongside her, “We’re not going back.”
In stop after stop, the presidential rivals essentially offered up two competing versions of reality in the final hours before Election Day. Mr. Trump repeatedly raised the specter of unchecked immigration and the dangers of Democratic policies as he spoke to crowds in North Carolina and Pennsylvania, with another stop planned in Michigan.
With a comparatively more optimistic message, Ms. Harris crisscrossed Pennsylvania, which holds 19 electoral votes that could decide the race. Stopping in Scranton, Allentown and Pittsburgh before a nighttime rally in Philadelphia, Ms. Harris talked about bolstering the economy and restoring federal abortion rights. She asserted that Americans were “exhausted” and ready to move on from the politics of the past decade.
“America is ready for a fresh start,” she said to supporters on a college campus in Allentown, “where we see our fellow Americans not as an enemy but as a neighbor.”
About 30 miles to the southwest, Mr. Trump was broadly portraying undocumented immigrants as mentally ill criminals and calling those accused of crimes “savages” and “animals.”
