New York, Oct 28
Former US President Donald Trump is in New York, the heartland of the Democratic Party, for a campaign rally on Sunday at the Madison Square Garden where fervent supporters camped overnight in sleeping bags for an assured place in the 20,000-seat arena while protesters prepared for demonstrations.
After two assassination attempts against Trump, a tight security cordon by police and the Secret Service girdled the venue - Madison Square Garden, the stadium that is known to host major sporting events, concerts and in 2014 a rally addressed by visiting Prime Minister Narendra Modi.
The rally here could be a lost cause -- in the 2020 elections, Trump received only 23 per cent of the votes in the city to Joe Biden's 76 per cent -- and he could instead be campaigning in states where the election is projected to be a toss-up and he has a chance of making a difference. But for a man who believes in symbolism and relies on showmanship, it will be a sign of defiance in the nation's media capital - where he was convicted in a criminal case.
New York is also his native place, where he built his real estate empire estimated at billions based on an inheritance of possibly hundreds of millions from his father Fred Trump.
He also built his national image here on television and the celebrity circuit where his escapades were tabloid fodder.
Regardless of his embarrassing vote record in 2020 in the city, nationally two influential polls by The New York Times and CNN last week show Trump and Democratic Party's Kamala Harris locked in a tie, while RealClear Polling's authoritative aggregation of polls gives Trump a razor-thin 0.1 lead.
With the baggage of conviction -- in the hush money case -- and pending cases, and the accusations of threatening democracy, Trump's showing in the polls confounds Democrats and other observers.
Former First Lady Michelle Obama, campaigning with Harris in Michigan on Saturday, wondered, "I gotta ask myself: why on earth is this race even close? I lay awake at night wondering: what in the world is going on?"
His supporters, concerned more about the tidal wave of illegal migration and the inflation which has sent the prices of everyday items up about 25 per cent, are apparently unperturbed by the criminal conviction or the cases of alleged election interference, instigation of the riot that invaded the Capitol, and mishandling secret documents.
In a Harvard poll conducted by the polling organisation Harris, which is unconnected to the Vice President, price rise and immigration came up as the top issues.
The poll released this month found that 39 per cent of registered voters named inflation their prime concern and 35 per cent immigration.
Countering the impact of the criminal conviction and pending cases, Trump has portrayed himself as a victim of "political persecution".
"These lawsuits are being run by the Department of Justice, the FBI (Federal Bureau of Investigation). (President Joe) Biden is behind it all, believe it or not, and he proved that yesterday with his stupid statement," he said last week reprising a theme in all his rallies.
He was referring to Biden's statement at a rally, "Got to lock him up", although the President walked back on it.
In his attempts to appeal to the working class, he turned up at a barber saloon in the Bronx borough of New York to listen to the men working there and the clientele far removed from the glamorous circles he had moved in.
He also donned an apron and put on a show of working at a McDonald's restaurant in Pennsylvania frying potato chips and serving at a drive-through window.
Trump held a smaller rally of a few thousand in May in South Bronx, one of the most impoverished areas of the city.
As the election looms nine days away, Harris has made character the key issue against him and received the backing of several Republicans on this.
A slew of former Trump officials, including his Chief of Staff John Kelly and National Security Adviser John Bolton, and Republican leaders like former Vice President Dick Cheney, have declared that he "lacks the character to lead the nation" and is a "danger to democracy".
On the other hand, the Vice President has chosen the Ellipse in Washington DC as the venue for her campaign’s closing argument on Tuesday.
Harris’s choice of the Ellipse on the ground of the US Capitol, which is home to the US Congress, is intended to serve as a reminder to American voters of a rally Trump addressed there on January 6, 2021. From the rally, his supporters had marched on to the US Capitol in a bid to prevent a joint sitting of the two chambers from certifying Joe Biden as the winner of the 2020 election and the next President.
“On Tuesday, October 29, with just one week until Election Day, Vice President Kamala Harris will deliver a major closing argument address in Washington on the Ellipse,” the campaign said in a coverage guidance for media on Saturday.
Harris will use the venue to reinforce one of her campaign’s key issue, that the former President presents a threat to democracy and the constitution. She called him a “fascist” in a recent town hall hosted by CNN.
