Donald Trump began the penultimate day of the campaign in North Carolina, however, a state he won in 2020 but where Vice President Kamala Harris has forced him to compete to the end.
The exhausting, eventful, and excruciatingly close election of 2024 converged on Pennsylvania on Monday for the last day of campaigning, as Vice President Kamala Harris and former President Donald J. Trump try to nail down the commonwealth’s 19 electoral votes, which could make or break their presidential ambitions.
But Mr. Trump began the penultimate day in Raleigh, N.C., the capital of a state he won in 2020 but where the latest New York Times/Siena College poll showed Ms. Harris with a slight edge. His voice was raspy, his demeanor fatigued, as he meandered through remarks in an arena that wasn’t full. He did not project enormous confidence, as he told the crowd, “This will be our final moment.”
“I think we’ve got it under control,” he said, trudging through a meandering speech that extended about 90 minutes but broke little new ground.
Mr. Trump rehashed familiar grievances about former President Barack Obama, who has been campaigning heavily for Ms. Harris, and the news media. He continued to assail the Biden-Harris administration over its handling of the economy and immigration before making another digression: He said he felt slighted for not receiving credit for prison reform during his presidency.
Ms. Harris dropped by a door-knocking operation in Scranton, Pa., early in the afternoon, rallying her Democratic troops but declining to mention Mr. Trump’s name, calling him simply “this other guy.” Glen Arthur, a local carpenter, introduced her as the “M.V.P.” and a “champion of workers.”
Both campaigns on Monday insisted that early vote totals going into Election Day on Tuesday boded well for their candidates, but Pennsylvania, the largest of the seven swing states that will choose the next president, also has the lowest early vote total.
Regardless of who wins, history will be made, and Pennsylvania will be key. Mr. Trump, who hopes to become the first president in more than 120 years to return to office after an electoral defeat, has rallies planned in Reading and Pittsburgh, while his running mate, Senator JD Vance of Ohio, closes his campaign in the Philadelphia suburb of Newtown.
After Scranton, Ms. Harris, who hopes to make even loftier history as America’s first woman president, will hold a rally in Allentown featuring two Puerto Rican entertainers, stop by Reading, then close out with rallies in Pittsburgh and Philadelphia. (Her running mate, Gov. Tim Walz of Minnesota, is campaigning in Wisconsin and Michigan.)
For some worried Democrats, the vice president’s final, star-studded rally, planned for the famed “Rocky steps” of the Philadelphia Museum of the Arts, brought to mind the last Democrat who tried to become the nation’s first woman president. Hillary Clinton closed out her 2016 campaign in Philadelphia with presidents past (Bill Clinton), present (Barack Obama), and she hoped, future, only to be beaten in the state — and the nation — by an underdog newcomer, Mr. Trump.
But Pennsylvania is no less important now than it was eight years ago, and Ms. Harris’s aspirations might rest on record turnout from the City of Brotherly Love. She hopes voters will get inspired to come out with the help of superstars Lady Gaga, Ricky Martin and Oprah Winfrey.
For Ms. Harris, the three-month campaign sprint has been marked by a conscious assemblage of an anti-Trump coalition spanning the ideological spectrum, from former Vice President Dick Cheney on the right to Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York on the left.
On Monday, Mr. Cheney’s daughter, and perhaps Mr. Trump’s fiercest Republican adversary, former Representative Liz Cheney, appeared on the daytime television show “The View” to respond to Mr. Trump saying she should have “nine rifles pointed at her face.”
“He knows what he’s doing,” Ms. Cheney said. “He knows it’s a threat, to intimidate. Obviously the intimidation won’t work.”
On Monday, Jason Miller, a senior Trump adviser, said that Trump’s campaign would declare victory “when we are confident that we cross the 270 thresholds” in the Electoral College. But Miller deflected when asked what measure Mr. Trump — who has never conceded his 2020 loss, which he spent months trying to overturn — and his campaign would use to make that determination.
Across Pennsylvania, Ms. Harris’s surrogates tried to round up the last votes and energize supporters.
After Bill Clinton addressed about 200 Democratic supporters on Saturday at the Steamfitters Local in Harmony, Pa., about 30 miles north of Pittsburgh, Ann Phillips, a nurse, told the former president that her son, Ron Phillips Jr., had “hung on every word that Trump said.”
So when Mr. Trump proclaimed in the early stages of the Covid pandemic that he would not wear a mask, Mr. Phillips, who ran five miles a day and bench-pressed 350 pounds, told her, “Mom, if President Trump isn’t wearing a mask, I’m not wearing one.”
In the summer of 2020, Mr. Phillips, who worked in law enforcement, died of Covid at the age of 49, Ms. Phillips said.
“I’m not blaming Trump,” Ms. Phillips, a Harris supporter, said later. “My son had a good mind. He was educated. But I don’t think people realize the power of a president’s words.” (https://www.nytimes.com/2024/11/04/us/politics/harris-trump-pennsylvania-campaign.html)
