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      A win for Joe Biden would only scratch the surface of America’s afflictions | John Mulholland

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      On 18 September, the first day of early voting in the US, Jason Miller, a house painter from Minneapolis, became, according to the Washington Post, one of the first people in the country to vote. He cast his vote for Joe Biden, saying: “I’ve always said that I wanted to be the first person to vote against Donald Trump. For four years, I have waited to do this.” Close to 90 million people have already voted in the US and it is on track to record the highest turnout since 1908.We can thank Donald Trump for that, a man who attracts fierce loyalty from his supporters but who energises his opponents in equal measure. The country has been fixated by the White House occupant for the past four years. But there is a danger that progressives and liberals invest too much faith in Trump’s departure and too little in what will be needed to fix America. Getting rid of Trump might be one thing, fixing America is another.If the president loses, there will be much talk of a new normality and the need for a democratic reset. Hopes will be voiced for a return to constitutional norms. There will be calls for a return of civility in public discourse and a healing of the partisan divide that scars America. All of that is as it should be. But it ought to come with a recognition that America was broken long before it elected Trump and his departure would be no guarantee that the country will be mended. Many of the systemic issues that afflict the US predate Trump.His ugly and dysfunctional presidency has distracted from many of the fundamentals that have beset America for decades, even centuries. But they remain stubbornly in place. If he does lose, America will no longer have Trump to blame. Two two-term Democratic presidents over the past 30 years have not significantly affected the structural issues that corrode US democracy and society, and race is always at their heart. The past few months have drawn further attention to the systemic racism and brutality that characterise much policing. But racism in the States is not confined to the police. In fact, it is not confined at all. More

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      On my travels, I saw a vision of two Americas – but which one will triumph?

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      A stilt walker dressed as Uncle Sam lumbered between selfies, a lifesize dummy of Donald Trump – complete with bulging eye bags – sat motionless by the roadside, and families, young and old, waved Trump flags as cars tooted their horns in support.
      It was a grey autumn Saturday earlier this month at a Republican rally just outside Youngstown, Ohio – a once prosperous city in the heart of America’s rustbelt, embedded in a region that flipped to Donald Trump in 2016.
      What started as a casual political gathering, however, descended into a full-throated confrontation that encapsulated the stark divisions that underscore this seminal election, and perhaps the state of the country as a whole.
      A bashed up red Chevy pickup daubed in handmade “Dump Trump” signs pulled up slowly. And a lone protester, Chuckie Denison, a former factory worker at a local General Motors plant that closed last year, jumped out to berate the assembled crowd.
      “Two-hundred-and-twenty-thousand Americans have died under Trump. And our jobs have gone.” he shouted. “And all we ask is for somebody to represent all of us.”
      I’d come to Youngstown because Donald Trump had made direct promises to the people living here; to restore a failing economy and bring back manufacturing jobs after years of decay. But poverty and jobless rates continue to soar here.
      In that crowd of Trump supporters were people who had worked at the same plant as Denison, and others who had lost their jobs during the pandemic. And yet they still believed Trump would bring stability to their lives.
      “He’s probably paid,” said one Trump supporter – dismissing Denison, who had been accosted by a number of the flag wavers.
      Within minutes, Denison’s signs were ripped from his truck and he was sent away in a whirlwind of abusive language.

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      I have driven thousands of miles throughout this election season, for our Anywhere But Washington film series, visiting the battleground states of Ohio, Georgia, Texas, Florida and North Carolina. And it has often felt like reporting in two parallel dimensions, where common ground between two factions of the same nation can feel nonexistent.
      On one end, a feverish loyalty to the president, where not even the most sensational of scandals have a bearing on political belief. And where disinformation has given way to objective fact. On the other what often feels like a greater enthusiasm for removing Trump from office than for the Democrat on the top of the ticket. But still a constituency that increasingly reflects the diversity of the country itself.
      After two months of travel, and with most polls predicting an overwhelming victory for Biden, I’m still unsure who will win and whether any sort of victory has the power to reunite this fractured nation.
      ***
      The passionate public disagreement I saw in Youngstown felt emblematic of a divided country and there are dark forces underpinning much of it.
      Donald Trump has weaponized extremist misinformation to bolster his campaign and reverted to pushing conspiracy theories that cast doubt over election integrity, and, most recently, question the ethics of doctors working to save the lives of Covid-19 patients. He has declined to disavow QAnon, a baseless far-right conspiracy movement, which suggests Trump is the victim of a ‘deep state’ plot run by satanic paedophiles tied to the Democratic party. Instead, he described the movement as being filled with patriotic citizens “who love America”.
      Recent polling indicates that half of his supporters now believe in the conspiracy movement.
      On an intensely humid day in Peach county, central Georgia, I hitched a ride with organizers for Black Voters Matter, a voting rights advocacy group targeting marginalized Black communities in a bid to boost turnout and fight rampant voter suppression. Georgia is a battleground state for the first time in decades, and turning out voters in low-income minority neighborhoods could be the key to swinging it for the Democrats.
      But Fenika Miller, a regional organizer, already faces an uphill task – and pervasive disinformation has made it even harder.
      Miller remains upbeat, she registers voters with a smile and seems driven to get those in her community out to the polls. She blares James Brown’s funk classic Say It Loud – I’m Black And I’m Proud out of her van to draw people from their homes.

      The enthusiasm for Biden is palpable in many of the neighborhoods we visited. But one encounter was chilling.
      “Joe Biden, he’s trying to legalize paedophiles,” said one young man as he explained to Miller that he was already registered and voting for Trump.
      I ask where he got his information from. “Every morning I get on my phone and watch different videos and stuff. You just put two and two together.”
      Miller is coming into contact with these dangerous falsehoods on a daily basis.
      “We’re living in dangerous times under a dangerous administration,” she said. “It’s intentional misinformation they’re putting out specifically targeting young voters and Black voters.”
      She hugged the young man and asked him to be careful where he reads his news. But it was clear his mind was already made up. He was not the last person I came into contact with expressing belief in QAnon.
      ***
      Away from the sinister conspiracy movements, my travels through the US have often felt like wading through a sea of alternative facts, where flat-out lies and mistruth have become mainstream Republican talking points and often the only way to excuse the president’s catastrophic policy failures.
      In Texas, which for the first time in generations is now a battleground state after record early voter turnout, I met Rick Barnes, chairman of the Tarrant County Republican Party in suburban Dallas. I asked him if Trump’s child separation policy at the southern border had ever given him pause to question the morality in his party.
      “That was not a policy that Trump put in place. That was a policy of the predecessor,” he replied.
      I pointed out this was untrue and that Trump’s former attorney general Jeff Sessions had specifically instructed his Justice Department to separate children from their parents as a deterrence, something unprecedented in US history.
      “That’s something we’d have to agree to disagree on,” he replied.
      In Florida, a critical swing state, I met Malcolm Out Loud, a conservative radio host who argued that Dr Anthony Fauci, the country’s top infectious disease expert is “a fraud” and that the official Covid-19 death toll is inflated.
      “This entire pandemic has been a setup,” he said.
      I pointed out he had no public health background or any expertise to make such a claim.
      “We can agree to disagree,” he replied, mirroring the refrain from Barnes.

      ***
      The extreme policy and dark rhetoric of the past four years has punished the most vulnerable in US society. And it’s in many of these communities where I found the most fervent faith in Joe Biden and, more pointedly, a vision of America that marked a return to societal norms.
      In the southern border city of McAllen, Texas I visited the Ramirez family who have for six generations maintained a small chapel close to the US-Mexico border. It was once a site on the underground railroad, offering safe haven to escaped slaves. Dozens of the family’s ancestors are buried in its graveyard. But Donald Trump’s wall is being built just a few feet away.
      If building goes ahead – the foundations have been laid but not the wall itself – the family chapel will be effectively partitioned from the United States, and the Ramirez family will be forced to go through customs checks to visit their ancestors.
      “We are praying for Joe Biden, because him winning is the only thing that will stop this wall,” said Silvia Ramirez as she stood at the graveyard, now surrounded by rubble.
      Biden has pledged to immediately end construction of Trump’s wall if elected, which would most likely save the family’s chapel.
      Prayer for Biden is ongoing in the battleground state of North Carolina as well. Here I met a group of traveling evangelical preachers desperate to convince others in their denomination to change their minds. In 2016 white evangelicals made up over a quarter of voters in the country and 81% of them voted for Donald Trump.
      Many of the pastors on this national bus tour, named Vote Common Good, had themselves been loyal Republicans until Donald Trump came to office but his child separation policy along with attempts to ban Muslims from entering the country, inspired a number of them to speak out.
      “This is a diagnostic election that’s going to show us who we are,” said pastor Doug Pagitt, the group’s founder. “And if the Christian community in this country says: ‘this [Trump] is our guy’ again, that is an indictment.”

      ***
      Although opposition to Trump has galvanized a base of moral support for Biden, the former vice-president was far from a consensus candidate among progressives.
      But it is not simply Biden and Trump on the ballot this year, the president’s challenger is joined all over the country by a field of Democratic Party candidates that increasingly represent the diversity of America.
      2020 sees the largest number of Black women running for Congress and not all of them are full throated Biden backers.
      In Texas’s 24th congressional district, a stretch of suburban sprawl outside of Dallas, I met Candace Valenzuela, vying to become the first Afro-Latina elected to Congress. A few years ago this district was solid Republican, but now it’s a toss-up, a marker of the state’s rapidly evolving demographics and many suburban voters’ deep dislike of Trump.
      She is diplomatic when discussing whether a 77-year-old white man is really representative of the change occurring at the grassroots of her party.
      “I don’t think any one of us captures the essence of it,” she says. “It’s something that’s happening in aggregate.”

      But Ebony Carter, a 25-year-old first time candidate and Black Lives Matter activist, is more direct when describing the presidential candidate she will share a ballot with.
      I asked if she thought that Biden’s candidacy spoke to younger people of color in America.
      “No,” she replied. “I’ll be clear with that one.
      “However, I believe that Joe Biden is overwhelmingly the best choice for the job and I’m honored to be on any ticket with anyone who is actually going to fight for American lives, and I think that’s what he’s going to do.”
      Throughout my journey finding authentic, representative politics has been tough – given the nation’s monumental divisions.
      But Ebony Carter’s candidacy, in Georgia’s 110th statehouse district outside of Atlanta, another of those run by Republicans for decades, felt like a shining example of how this country might be unified.
      She is out every day canvassing in both Democratic and Republican neighborhoods with her mother Deborah, who serves as her unofficial campaign manager, and her one year-old daughter Nairobi, who sleeps in a pram as Ebony tries to convince anyone who will listen to turn up and vote. She is pushing healthcare reform and better funding for public education.
      But most importantly she is pushing to build a grassroots movement from the bottom up, trying to engage those who do not normally participate in the electoral process.
      “Why am I doing this?” she said as the sun began to set after a full day of canvassing and Nairobi began to wake up. “Because somebody has to. I want to show people that it’s possible. And I’m doing it for her.” More

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      Joe Biden: from a campaign that came close to folding to the verge of victory

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      Just days before one of the most extraordinary presidential elections in US history, the Democratic nominee, Joe Biden, finds himself flush with cash, polling ahead of Donald Trump in state and national polls, and on a bold last-minute campaign offensive in parts of the country his Republican opponent won in 2016, and would usually be able to depend on for support.
      After a year of a crippling pandemic, economic crisis and historic upheaval, according to some of the most important metrics, Biden is the favorite to win the 2020 presidential election and become the 46th president of the United States.
      Evoking the legacy of Franklin Delano Roosevelt, the president who guided the country through the Great Depression and the second world war, Biden brought his closing arguments deep into Republican heartland this week in Warm Springs, Georgia, a tiny spa town Roosevelt would often visit to treat his paralysis.
      “God and history have called us to this moment and to this mission,” Biden said, appealing directly to voters who chose Trump in 2016, in a sign of how emboldened this campaign has become. “The Bible tells us there’s a time to break down, and a time to build up. A time to heal. This is that time.”
      Biden’s mission was always certain: this election was a “battle for the soul of the nation”, he told voters when he announced his candidacy 18 months ago. But his fortunes haven’t always seemed so bright, and it was by no means a sure thing that he would even make it to this moment. More

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      The polls may have got it wrong in 2016, but not this time round. Surely?

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      If the poll numbers are to be believed, Joe Biden has already won this week’s US presidential race. But after the scarring experience of 2016, when Donald Trump unexpectedly came up from behind, few voters, election analysts, or even pollsters have complete faith in opinion-poll predictions.
      One exception is James Carville, Bill Clinton’s 1992 campaign strategist, who says a Biden landslide, plus a Democratic takeover of the Senate, is a dead cert. “This thing is not going to be close,” he said last month. His interviewer was too polite to point out that Carville also predicted a Hillary Clinton landslide four years ago.
      The hedging of bets by commentators is understandable but not wholly rational. By most polling measures, Biden has held a clear lead over Trump for months in the vast majority of national and swing (battleground) state polls.
      The race is perceptibly tightening. But with four days to go, Biden’s averaged-out national lead was 7.4%, or about 51% to 43%. As of 29 October, he also led in all the top swing states, namely Florida (by an average 1.9%), Pennsylvania (5.8%), Michigan (8.4%), Wisconsin (7.8%), North Carolina (2.1%) and Arizona (3.4%).
      Some of these margins are narrow. But under winner-takes-all rules, all a state’s electoral-college votes go to the candidate who comes out ahead, even if by only 0.1%. In 2016, Trump won the college, and thus the election, thanks to victories by less than 2% in four states, including Florida with its 29 college votes.
      This time around, polls suggest, the opposite may happen. In other words, Trump could be on the losing end of close results in swing states. There may also be surprises, for example in Georgia and even Texas, states that traditionally vote Republican but are judged competitive this year.
      Given that he lost the 2016 popular vote by nearly three million ballots, Trump may nevertheless pin his hopes on pulling off the electoral-college trick again. He has made plain his willingness to contest the outcome if it goes against him. He could ask the supreme court, with its newly enhanced conservative majority, to adjudicate – as it did in 2000 when George W Bush sneaked past Al Gore.
      Fence-sitters fearful of being caught out again should also study poll data such as Trump’s average approval ratings. Overall, 53% of Americans disapprove of the job he is doing, against 44% who approve. On the economy, he has a 2.3% positive score but on his handling of the coronavirus pandemic, he gets a 16.5% negative rating.
      Looked at another way, a current average of all polls suggests 50.4% of Americans have a favourable opinion of Biden, while Trump’s figure is 41.9%. In fact, Trump has not exceeded a 44% favourable rating at any time in his presidency. His under-performance is nothing if not consistent.
      US pollsters also assess voters by gender, race, education and religion. While Trump enjoys strong support from non-college-educated white men and Christian evangelicals, for example, Biden is said to be well ahead among all women voters, especially white suburban women, college graduates and Catholics.
      Biden is also counting on winning a large majority of black voters. It is thought that the Latino vote could split. Democratic successes in the 2018 midterm elections, when the party won control of the House of Representatives, were propelled by these groups.
      Meanwhile, some polling points towards a Democratic takeover in the 100-seat Senate. Republicans, who now hold a slim majority there, have most to lose. Seven out of nine “toss-ups” are held by GOP senators.
      It’s always possible that poll predictions of a Biden victory on Tuesday are overblown. But it seems unlikely that Trump can reverse voting intentions that have been firmly in place for months. Nearly 90 million Americans have already voted. It’s too late to change their minds. Even if the polls are as wrong as they were in 2016, Biden’s margin of advantage is so great that he still wins. Probably. More

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      USA OK? My FAQs about Trump, Biden, the election and what happens next | Robert Reich

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      You’ve been in or around politics for more than 50 years. How are you feeling about Tuesday’s election?
      I’m more frightened for my country than I’ve ever been. Another four years of Donald Trump would be devastating. Still, I suspect Biden will win.
      But in 2016, the polls ….
      Polling is better now, and Biden’s lead is larger than Hillary Clinton’s was.
      What about the electoral college?
      He is also leading in the so-called “swing” states that gave Trump an electoral college victory in 2016.
      Will Trump contest the election?
      Undoubtedly. He’ll claim fraudulent mail-in ballots in any swing state Biden wins where the governor is a Republican – states such as Florida, Georgia, Ohio and Arizona. He’ll ask those governors not to certify Biden electors until fraudulent ballots are weeded out.
      What’s his goal?
      To deny Biden a majority of electors and throw the decision into the House of Representatives, where Republicans are likely to have a majority of state delegations.
      Will it work?
      No, because technically Biden only needs a majority of electors already appointed. Even if disputed ones are excluded, I expect he’ll still get a majority.
      What about late ballots?
      Trump has demanded all ballots be counted by midnight election day. It’s not up to him. It’s up to individual state legislatures and state courts. Most will count ballots as long as they’re postmarked no later than election day.
      Will these issues end up in the supreme court?
      Some may, but the justices know they have to appear impartial. Last week they turned down a request to extend the deadline for receiving mail-in ballots in Wisconsin but allowed extensions to remain in place in Pennsylvania and North Carolina.
      But the supreme court decided the 2000 election for George W Bush.
      The last thing John Roberts, the chief justice, wants is another Bush v Gore. With six Republican appointees now on the court, he knows its legitimacy hangs in the balance.
      Trump has called for 50,000 partisans to monitor polls while people vote, naming these recruits the “army for Trump”. Do you expect violence or intimidation?
      Not enough to affect the outcome.
      Assume you’re right and Biden wins. Will Trump concede?
      I doubt it. He can’t stand to lose. He’ll continue to claim the election was stolen from him.
      Will the Democrats retake the Senate?
      Too close to call.
      If not, can Biden get anything done?
      Biden was a senator for 36 years and has worked with many of the current Republicans. He believes he can coax them into working with him.
      Is he right?
      I fear he’s overly optimistic. The GOP isn’t what it used to be. It’s now answerable to a much more conservative, Trumpian base.
      If Republicans keep the Senate, what can we expect from a Biden administration?
      Reversals of Trump executive orders and regulations – which will restore environmental and labor protections and strengthen the Affordable Care Act. Biden will also fill the executive branch with competent people, who will make a big difference. And he’ll end Trump’s isolationist, go-it-alone foreign policy.
      And if Democrats retake the Senate?
      Helpful, but keep your expectations low. Both Bill Clinton and Barack Obama had Democratic Congresses for their first two years yet spent all their political capital cleaning up economic messes their Republican predecessors left behind. Biden will inherit an even bigger economic mess plus a pandemic. With luck, he’ll enact a big stimulus package, reverse the Trump Republican tax cuts for the wealthy, and distribute and administer a Covid vaccine. All important, but nothing earth-shattering.
      If Biden wins, he’ll be the oldest man to ever be president. Will this be a problem for him in governing?
      I don’t see why. He’s healthy. But I doubt he’ll seek a second term, which will affect how he governs.
      What do you mean?
      He’s going to be a transitional rather than a transformational president. He won’t change the underlying structure of power in society. He won’t lead a movement. He says he’ll be a “bridge” to the next generation of leaders, by which I think he means that he’ll try to stabilize the country, maybe heal some of the nation’s wounds, so that he can turn the keys over to the visionaries and movement builders of the future.
      Will Trump just fade into the sunset?
      Hardly. He and Fox News will continue to be the most powerful forces in the GOP, at least for the next four years.
      And what happens if your whole premise is wrong and Donald Trump wins a second term?
      America and the rest of the world are seriously imperiled. I prefer not to think about it.
      Robert Reich, a former US secretary of labor, is professor of public policy at the University of California at Berkeley and the author of Saving Capitalism: For the Many, Not the Few and The Common Good. His new book, The System: Who Rigged It, How We Fix It, is out now. He is a columnist for Guardian US More

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      Biden campaign says Trump supporters tried to force bus off highway

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      Trucks with Trump signs and flags surrounded a Biden campaign bus on a Texas highway on Friday and attempted to slow the vehicle down and run it off the road, the Biden campaign said on Saturday.
      Several video clips posted on social media by both Biden and Trump supporters showed the trucks surrounding the bus. The trucks then tried to slow the bus down and run it off the road before staff called 911, according to the Biden campaign.
      The president himself appeared to endorse the behavior of his supporters, tweeting a video of the incident on Saturday evening along with the comment “I LOVE TEXAS!”
      “They’re literally escorting him out of town,” one man says, laughing as he narrates one clip of the incident shared by Trump supporters.
      Some of the Trump supporters surrounding the Biden campaign bus were armed, according to Democratic state representative Rafael Anchía and other observers.
      While the vice-presidential candidate, Kamala Harris, was campaigning in Texas that day, she not on the bus, a spokesman for a state Democratic representative confirmed.
      The incident happened on the I-35 highway in Texas as the bus was traveling from San Antonio to Austin, the Biden campaign said, adding that local law enforcement responded to the campaign’s calls and assisted the bus in reaching its destination.
      The campaign did not identify the law enforcement agency.

      Donald J. Trump
      (@realDonaldTrump)
      I LOVE TEXAS! pic.twitter.com/EP7P3AvE8L

      November 1, 2020

      A group of the same 12 cars has been following the Biden bus all over the country, CBS News Austin reported, citing Texas Democrats.
      Texas state Democrats also said they cancelled a campaign event on Friday evening for “public safety and security reasons.”
      A Democratic campaign event scheduled for Friday evening in Pflugerville was cancelled due to security concerns related to the cars following the Biden bus, Sheryl Cole, a Democratic state representative, tweeted on Friday.
      “Unfortunately, pro-Trump Protesters have escalated well beyond safe limits,” she wrote.
      The decision to cancel the Pflugerville event came after Democrats received reports in the late afternoon that there had been some kind of collision between a pro-Trump vehicle and another vehicle on I-35, André Treiber, a spokesperson for Cole, told the Guardian. The details of the incident on the highway are still not clear, Treiber said, including whether the collision turned out to be “an accident or an escalation”.
      “When you have two hours to make the call, you make the safe call,” Treiber said. “We wanted to make sure everyone was safe.”
      An event with Democratic politicians in Austin was also cancelled on Friday and law enforcement were present to ensure staff could leave the bus safely, the Biden campaign said.
      When the Biden-Harris bus stopped briefly in Austin earlier on Friday, Trump supporters heckled and faced off with Democrats, with Trump supporters calling Biden a “Chinese communist”, CBS Austin reported.
      The cars following the bus include a pro-Trump hearse emblazoned with the slogan, “Vote like your life depends on it,” according to social media and news reports.
      Republicans apologized after Trump supporters brought a casket to a Biden event outside Houston, with a dark-haired mannequin that some viewers saw as representing Kamala Harris, a local Fox News affiliate reported.
      Texans have flocked to the polls in recent days with more than 9.6 million having voted ahead of election day, surpassing the total number of votes cast four years ago.
      In what has been a reliably red state with low voter participation, 30.4% of this year’s ballots have been cast by voters who didn’t participate in 2016 at all, according to Tom Bonier, chief executive of political data firm TargetSmart. Turnout has surged especially among Asian, college-educated white and young Texans.
      “You can definitively say now, more voters under the age of 30 have voted already in Texas than have ever voted in any election, and that’s remarkable,” Bonier said.
      Trump is still slightly favored to win Texas – a state he took by nine points in 2016 – though polls showing a close race have ignited a firestorm of speculation about whether this is the year the state turns blue.
      “We feel good with where we’re at, but we need to keep on going, and you know, we’re not there yet,” said Abhi Rahman, communications director for the Texas Democratic party. More

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      US sets world record for coronavirus cases in 24 hours

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      The US has set a world record for coronavirus cases in 24 hours, according to one count with just over 100,000 new infections recorded.
      The daily caseload of 100,233 – as counted by Reuters – surpassed 97,894 cases reported by India on a single day in September.
      The news came three days before the presidential election, and as Donald Trump continued to stage large-scale events at which Covid mitigation measures such as mask-wearing and social distancing are not enforced. The president himself, the first lady, senior aides and Republican leaders contracted the virus after attending such events.
      Trump, who spent time in hospital, has insisted the US is “rounding the corner” in the fight to contain the pandemic. This week his oldest son, Donald Trump Jr, a key campaign surrogate, said deaths from Covid-19 were “almost nothing”.
      According to Johns Hopkins University – which counted nearly 99,000 US cases on Friday – nearly 230,000 of more than 9m US cases of Covid-19 have resulted in death.
      The president and his campaign have sought to present a contrast to Democratic challenger Joe Biden’s promise to implement another lockdown if necessary.
      On Saturday, Biden said in a statement: “President Trump still has no plan to address Covid-19. He quit on you, on your family, on America. He just wants us to grow numb to the horrors of the death toll and the pain. We cannot afford another four years of his failed leadership.”
      On Friday, scientists at Stanford University released a study which said recent Trump rallies produced more than 30,000 confirmed cases of Covid-19 and “likely led to more than 700 deaths”.
      The authors set out to “investigate the effects of large group meetings on the spread of Covid-19 by studying the impact of 18 Trump campaign rallies” over “up to 10 post-rally weeks for each event”.
      “Our estimate of the average treatment effect across the 18 events,” they wrote, “implies that they increased subsequent confirmed cases of Covid-19 by more than 250 per 100,000 residents.
      “Extrapolating this figure to the entire sample, we conclude that these 18 rallies ultimately resulted in more than 30,000 incremental confirmed cases of Covid-19. Applying county-specific post-event death rates, we conclude that the rallies likely led to more than 700 deaths (not necessarily among attendees)”.
      The US has exceeded its previous single-day record, of 77,299 cases registered in July, five times in the past 10 days. The number of daily infections reported in the last two days suggests the country is reporting more than one new case every second.
      Despite the overall figure, the US has a rate of about 28,100 cases per million people, which places it about 14th in the world for prevalence.
      Many states experiencing surges in case numbers are re-instituting social restrictions. In New York on Saturday, Governor Andrew Cuomo told reporters most people arriving in the state must now quarantine for at least three days before taking a coronavirus test. If that test comes back negative, the traveler can leave quarantine.
      The requirements will not apply to residents of “contiguous” states, Cuomo told reporters, and there will be different requirements for New Yorkers who leave the state for less than 24 hours.
      The governor named Connecticut, Pennsylvania and New Jersey as examples of contiguous states, home to many commuters to New York City. But it was unclear if neighbouring Vermont and Massachusetts would also be exempt. Cuomo’s office did not reply to questions seeking clarification on Saturday. More

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      Obama lends a hand as Biden and Trump launch final campaign blitz

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      America was on edge on Saturday as Donald Trump and Joe Biden launched a final campaign blitz amid a surging pandemic, record early voting and gnawing uncertainty over when the outcome of the presidential election will be known.
      Trailing in the polls, Trump began a frenzied schedule of 14 rallies in three days, even as the coronavirus scythed through the country. The US recorded more than 99,000 cases on Friday, its biggest ever single-day total. Many of the worst outbreaks are in the battleground states where the president is travelling.
      Biden campaigned with Barack Obama at drive-in rallies in Flint and Detroit, predominantly Black cities where strong turnout will be essential in the fight for Michigan. Stevie Wonder was to perform in Detroit.
      In Flint, Obama decried Trump as a president “who goes out of his way to insult people just because they don’t support them”.
      “With Joe and Kamala at the helm,” he said, “you’re not going to have to think about them every day. You’re not going to have to argue with your family about him every day. It won’t be so exhausting. You’ll be able to get on with your lives.”
      Obama also went after Trump’s idea of masculinity, saying that being a man once meant “taking care of other people”, rather than “strutting and showing off, acting important, bullying people”.
      Following the former president on stage, Biden briefly slipped back into much-criticised attack lines against Trump, who he has previously said he would like to fight. “When you were in high school wouldn’t you have liked to take a shot?” he asked, before apparently remembering to keep to the high road.
      “That’s a different story … but anyway. [Trump is] macho man.”
      Both men repeated Biden’s vow to get the coronavirus pandemic under control. But with record numbers of infections, and record numbers of voters casting ballots early, the dominant narratives of 2020 were still hurtling towards a potentially destabilising climax. There was intense anxiety over whether Tuesday will deliver a clear verdict or a prolonged, agonising vote count, over days or even weeks.
      More than eight in 10 Americans (86%) are somewhat or very worried there will be violent protests following the election, the Public Religion Research Institute found. Businesses in New York, Washington and other cities were boarding up in case of trouble.
      Trump has spent months claiming, without evidence, that he can only lose if it the vote is rigged. He has threatened to challenge the outcome and refused to commit to a peaceful transfer of power. In rural Pennsylvania on Saturday, the president told supporters they should scrutinise polls in Philadelphia, a Democratic city, on election day.
      Democrats have called for massive turnout, to put the result beyond doubt.
      The election comes after a year that has seen an impeachment trial, an economic crisis and a reckoning over racial injustice. But Covid-19 remains the defining issue and the candidates’ closing arguments could not be more different.
      Biden has been driving home the message that Trump mismanaged a pandemic that has infected 9 million and killed 229,000. “He’s doing nothing,” the former vice-president said this week. “We’re learning to die with it. Donald Trump has waved the white flag, abandoned our families and surrendered to the virus.”
      In Florida on Thursday, the president, who spent three nights in hospital after becoming infected, said: “You know the bottom line, though? You’re gonna get better. You’re gonna get better. If I can get better, anybody can get better. And I got better fast.”
      On Friday, he baselessly claimed: “Our doctors get more money if someone dies from Covid. You know that, right? I mean, our doctors are very smart people. So what they do is they say, ‘I’m sorry but everybody dies of Covid.’”
      The president was to hold four rallies in Pennsylvania on Saturday, then five on Sunday and five on Monday across Iowa, Florida, Michigan, North Carolina, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin. Observing mostly maskless supporters crammed together, critics have branded such rallies “super-spreader events”.
      Bob Shrum, a Democratic strategist who advised Al Gore and John Kerry, said: “Trump is frantically flying around the country in Air Force One giving these rally speeches, which I think motivate his base but also alienate a lot of other voters because they look at the pictures where people are cheek by jowl and there’s no masking.”
      Noting an outbreak among Vice-President Mike Pence’s staff, Shrum added: “You have just had Covid invade the White House for a second time, so I think it adds to the sense that that he can’t handle Covid.”
      Polls show Biden with a consistent lead nationally and up by smaller margins in the states that will decide the electoral college. Democrats could also win a majority in the Senate, potentially ending years of gridlock.
      But few are complacent. The final Fox News poll in 2016 showed Hillary Clinton leading Trump 48% to 44%; the final Fox News poll this year has Biden up 52%-44%. Analysts say that if polls are off by the same margin, Biden will still win.
      Bob Woodward, author of two bestselling books about Trump, said: “It looks like Biden’s going to win but I would not bet more than a dollar on it. I think it’s quite possible that Trump will win.” More