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      An excess of billionaires is destabilising politics – just as academics predicted

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      The concept of “elite overproduction” was developed by social scientist Peter Turchin around the turn of this century to describe something specific: too many rich people for not enough rich-person jobs. It’s a byproduct of inequality: a ton of poor people, sure, but also a superfluity of the wealthy, without enough positions to house them in the influence and status to which they think themselves entitled. In a modern context, that would mean senior positions in the government and civil service, along with the top tier of finance and law, but Turchin tested the hypothesis from ancient Rome to 19th-century Britain. The names and nature of the contested jobs and titles changed; the pattern remained. Turchin predicted in 2010 that by the 2020s it would be destabilising US politics.In the UK in recent years the phrase has been repurposed in the wildest ways – to mean an excess of people at university creates unwanted activism (my précis); or, in the Economist (paraphrasing again), landslides create too many mediocre backbench MPs, who can’t hope for preferment so make trouble instead. And while the second proposition might be true, the first is basic anti-intellectualism. Turchin didn’t specify exactly how much wealth puts you in a situation with an overproduced elite, but he didn’t mean debt-laden students; he didn’t mean MPs; he meant, for brevity, billionaires or the top 1%. When a lot of your media are billionaire-owned, those media sources become endlessly inventive in taking the heat off billionaires, nipping criticism in the bud by pilfering its vocabulary and throwing it back at everyone.But put a pin in that for a second, because elite overproduction in its true sense is hitting global politics square in the jaw. Elon Musk has inserted himself into the US election by means long term and short, above board and below it. His impact on X (formerly Twitter) since he bought it was mired for a while in comical cackhandedness, but over the past few months the real purpose has crystallised. Paid-for verification removed any faith in trusted sources that couldn’t be bought; Republican accounts flourish, Democratic ones languish. Musk himself has amplified lies and conspiracy theories. He has directly given $75m to his America PAC (political action committee), which has an X account and a yellow tick (whatever the hell that means) – it peddles xenophobic bilge. Musk opened a $1m Philadelphia voter giveaway that may be illegal earlier in the month.Musk also spoke at the Madison Square Garden rally, but left the “ironic” fash posting (derogatory language about places and races) to others. He made one promise: “We’re going to get the government off your back.” He fleshed out what small government meant, in a telephone town hall (like a radio phone in, except the radio phones you, the constituents) over the weekend: ordinary Americans would face “temporary hardship” as welfare programmes are slashed in order to restructure the economy, but they should embrace the pain, as “it will ensure long-term prosperity”.It’s not the worst thing to come out of Trump’s camp in these last, nail-biting few days, and it’s by no means the worst thing Musk has said, but it is the cleanest image yet of what elite overproduction looks like: Elon Musk could never have got himself elected into office in the US. But as the cost-cutting tsar, a made-up role Trump has promised him, he would exert extraordinary power to cause pain, with the only choice left to citizens being whether or not to hug it. Another billionaire donor, John Paulson, has been floated for the treasury secretary job, and Trump has a track record of rewarding big-ticket donors with a seat at the table – the billionaire Stephen Schwarzman boasted in print about his role in the new North America Free Trade Agreement negotiations in 2018, and as part of Trump’s “strategic and policy forum” during the 2017 administration.Inconveniently, more billionaires (21) have donated to Kamala Harris’s campaign than to Trump’s (14); this is a problem for mature democracies everywhere. All political parties court high net worth individuals. It creates an atmosphere of equivalence – if a rich man buys your clothes, how is that different to his buying you a social media platform, except that you’re a cheaper date? If a rich man quashes an endorsement of your rival, but doesn’t endorse you, does that pass the sniff test? If a rich man creates a thinktank, which devises an ideological scheme that people are medium-sure that you, in government, will adopt wholesale, whose proposals are recruiting ideologically loyal civil servants, collecting data on abortions and limiting the use of abortion pills, is that any different to a money-bags with a pet peeve buying a tennis match with a political leader at a charity auction?And what about the billionaires who keep a finger on both scales, donate to both candidates because why not, it suits them to stay friends and it’s chicken feed to them anyway? Is all this just the same game?Qualitatively, yes: all billionaires are bad news in politics; all bought influence is undemocratic. But as billionaires line up behind a neofascist, you can see that this is a new phase in which they’re looking for more bang for their buck. They’re not trying to protect their commercial interests; they don’t need more money. They don’t even seek to shore up their own political influence – rather, to neuter any influence that may countervail it. Delinquent elites are in an open crusade against democracy, which, yes, does appear to be pretty destabilising.

      Zoe Williams is a Guardian columnist More

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      Village in India where Harris is ‘daughter of the land’ on edge as US election looms

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      Kamala Harris may never have visited Thulasendrapuram, a sleepy village in south India, but its residents claim to be some of her most devoted fans.It was here, in among the verdant rice paddies and groundnut farms of rural Tamil Nadu, that Harris’s grandfather PV Gopalan was born. Though more than a century has passed since then, residents have proudly claimed Harris as a “daughter of the land”.The outcome of the US election next week, where Harris is running as the Democrat party’s presidential nominee, has the community on edge. At the local tea shop, local gossip has been pushed to one side to make way for chatter over the challenges posed by Harris’s opponent Donald Trump and the trends from crucial swing states.Banners and billboards bearing Harris’s face and wishing her good luck in Tamil, the local language, have also been erected across the village and daily pujas [prayers] are held at the local temple to ensure her victory.“Whether she wins or not is irrelevant to us. The fact that she is contesting is historic and makes us proud,” said M Murukanandan, a local politician.Harris has often spoken about the formative influence of her mother Shyamala Gopalan Harris’s Indian roots. Gopalan Harris was born in the south Indian city of Chennai, and went to university in Delhi but moved to the US at 19, after getting accepted to the University of California, Berkeley for her masters. She would go on to become a celebrated breast cancer research scientist and her success – overcoming the racism she regularly faced as “a brilliant 5-foot-tall brown woman with an accent” – is often cited by Harris as a great source of inspiration.View image in fullscreenDefying expectations to return to India for an arranged marriage, in 1963 she married Donald Harris, an economics graduate from Jamaica, and remained living in the US till her death from cancer in 2009. However, as Harris wrote in her memoir, “we were raised with a strong awareness of and appreciation for Indian culture. All of my mother’s words of affection or frustration came out in her mother tongue.”It was Harris’s passing reference to a phrase she said was often used by her mother “You think you just fell out of a coconut tree?” that came to be one of the defining moments of her presidential campaign, setting the internet alight with memes.Harris has also spoken of the south Indian food she grew up eating at home, with a particular fondness for idli and dosa, and said as a child they would visit both the Black baptist church and the Hindu temple. She was also taken for several trips to her Indian family in Chennai. It was here that Harris recalled long walks with her grandfather Gopalan, along Chennai’s famous beach, where he would speak to his young granddaughter of the importance of fighting for civil rights and equality. Harris last returned to Chennai beach to scatter her mother’s ashes in 2009.There are no relatives of Harris’s family left living in Thulasendrapuram and all that’s remaining of the ancestral house where her grandfather was born is a vacant plot of land. However, he is still remembered fondly in the village as a well-read man with progressive values and a passion for activism that he passed down to his daughters, Shyamala and Sarala.Villagers were keen to emphasise how her family’s ancestral ties to the village remained present. “We all still feel a connection to Kamala,” said 80-year-old N Krishnamurthy, a retired bank officer.Harris’s aunt Sarala still lives and works in Chennai and has visited Thulasendrapuram several times, where villagers refer to her as chithi, an affectionate term meaning younger sister. The wall of the local Dharmasastha Temple are inscribed with Harris’s name after her aunt donated 5000 rupees (£45) towards its renovation a decade ago in her honour.Murukanandan, the local politician, said he and several others in the village had recently contacted Sarala to convey good luck messages from the residents of Thulasendrapuram and express their hopes that one day Harris would finally visit them. “She agreed to pass on our wishes,” he said. “We also asked her to encourage Harris to visit our village after winning the election. We hope everything will be possible.”View image in fullscreenHarris’s presidential campaign has also inspired a flurry of village development in her honour. A new water tank, to collect and harvest rainwater for the village, is under construction which will have a plaque bearing Harris’s name. A new village bus stop, named after Harris, is also being built.N Kamakodi, chairman of a local bank that is helping fund the renovation, said Harris’s rise to prominence thousands of miles away in the US was helping to uplift the local village. “We need to celebrate our daughter’s rise to power in any way we can,” he said. “If she wins the election, we will install more public utilities to honour her achievements and legacy. She is a source of pride and a lasting identity for us.”Yet in the US, the impact of Harris’s Indian heritage among the Indian American diaspora – now the second largest immigrant group in the states – remains more debatable, with her Black identity widely seen as much more significant. Historically Indian American voters have overwhelmingly been Democrat but a survey released this week by the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace indicates that support for the Democrats is on the decline from 2020, even with Harris on the ticket.According to the survey, 61% of registered Indian American voters intend to vote for Harris, but since 2020 there has also been a slight increase in those who intend to vote for Trump. The gender difference was particularly notable: 67% of Indian American women intend to vote for Harris, compared with 53% of men.Yet as the villagers of Thulasendrapuram were keen to point out, around 250 families from the village had emigrated to the US for jobs in recent years, many for work in the software industry, and several were now registered to vote in the upcoming elections.“These families likely have at least 10 votes in favour of Harris,” said local farmer Jancy Rani. “So, the village is contributing modestly to her success.” More

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      ‘This is too serious to drown out’: six US voters on what they’re most anxious about

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      Hundreds of US voters from across the country shared with the Guardian how they are coping with the stress of the looming election, and which issues and possible outcomes make them the most anxious or concerned.Here are six of them.‘I worry about a further erosion of women’s rights’As a gynecologist in Georgia, I worry about a further erosion of women’s rights. Pregnancy is already dangerous here. Once Roe was overturned, the six-week ban went into effect and we quickly saw we couldn’t provide medically appropriate care to our patients.It also created a lot of fear and confusion amongst healthcare providers who didn’t want to put their license or livelihood on the line. The confusion was the purpose of the law, causing delays in care and “preventing” abortion. Unfortunately all it did was mean that patients had to be very sick before a doctor would intervene. We are seeing women bear the consequences – getting very sick, unable to get pregnant again, losing babies, and in some cases, dying.As a queer family with children, our marriage, rights, privacy and ability to make healthcare decisions [may] be impacted. We can’t watch TV as is, with all the hateful anti-trans ads. It’s hard to sleep. B, an obstetrician gynecologist, from Georgia‘We need a strong leadership to handle international problems, whoever wins the election’I’m worried that other countries don’t realize what motivates Americans to vote for Trump. I don’t think he’s the best president we’ve ever had, he’s kind of like a New York playboy. But I think he had a good successful term, despite being an amateur politician, rather than a career one.The continuous character assassination of him when he first ran was a slick orchestration. Every newspaper was immediately against him, it was like somebody had pressed a button, like a set-up or something. This motivated me to vote for him, to oppose the organised media and political establishment.People in Europe seem to think we’re simple-minded for voting for him, but we’re not. We all just felt – ‘Let’s try him for a while.’ We’re all so tired of liberals from California running the country. They created a machine of sorts, and Trump startled that machine.I hope Trump gets his second term now, and I’m very much impressed by his running mate. But I’m concerned about the ability of both Trump and Harris to handle the many international problems we have now, such as threats from Russia. The dollar is losing security. In the Middle East, anything could happen. It’s important that we have a good leadership who can sort this all out, whoever wins. Rob, a retired computer programmer, from Maine‘American democracy will survive another excruciating Trump term’Calling the re-election of Trump the end of democracy is dramatic. Calling his return to power the end of democracy as we know it, is apt.I believe America’s democracy, flawed and vulnerable as it may be, is resilient enough to withstand another Trump term. I think it’s politically expedient to proclaim that a second Trump term would drive us directly into purely despotic rule.The day-to-day of watching [Trump] run the country that I love would be excruciating, again, but I think what really is nightmare fuel is [the prospect of a] Vance presidency, which feels likely and could [entail] a dismantling of nearly all social goods left in the US.Under either man, US support for beleaguered or aspiring democracies could crater; alliances with Nato and other democratically aligned organizations could be severed or allowed to atrophy. But perhaps most dishearteningly, the election of a Maga Republican would signal that the leader of the free world would now be supplanted by a leader of the strongman world.What makes it worse is the countervailing hope of a Democratic term or two, where the country would finally have room to heal. They actually give me hope, and I would grieve the loss of hope.I’m not drinking at the moment, on purpose. Quit weed, too. I feel this is too serious to drown it out. Nile Curtis, 48, a massage therapist, from Hawaii‘America is now unable to discuss different viewpoints’Our greatest concern about the election, aside from the outcome, is the potential eruption of violence. The inflammatory rhetoric, the noxious stereotypes and the intractable position of Trump’s supporters who might or might not like him, but will vote for him anyway, is proof that the US is currently incapable of conducting any sort of discourse. Regardless of who wins, the threat of impending doom feels very real.We are older parents of a disabled adult. While the economy is a pressing issue for everyone, social security seems to be in danger. As people who are closer in age to retirement, and caring for a disabled adult, we are unsure of the impact either candidate would have on our “bigger picture”, but we feel that Mr Trump’s rhetoric brings an added layer of threatening behavior from people on both sides, who have become increasingly defensive and unwilling to accept and discuss different viewpoints.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionHow do we manage our anxieties around these issues? We keep to ourselves. We do not engage in political or ideological discussions with anyone and limit our time watching and reading the news. The constant barrage of reporting, which has become pseudo-journalistic in pursuit of increasing [audience] numbers, appears to be geared to stoke the anxiety. The 24/7 news cycle has injected a stream of fear into everyone. MG, a mother and grandmother, from North Carolina‘I’m tired of having to vote against a candidate instead of voting for one’I want to vote for a president who supports the causes that I’m most concerned with: climate change, healthcare, cost of living, availability of housing. I will vote for Harris, but more as a vote against Trump.I think the Democratic party has shown that they’re willing to invest in renewable energy, which is fantastic. But I’m concerned with the promotion of record oil and gas numbers by the Democratic campaign this election cycle. That being said, I think the Republican party would be significantly worse.I believe that not enough housing is being constructed, period, and what is being built is only for those who can afford it. There’s a lot of short-term Airbnb-type rentals in Portland that further reduce the housing stock, and I’m concerned about ever being able to afford a house.I think for gen Z the biggest issues aren’t being reflected by either campaign. The rapid spread of disinformation on divisive, extremist social media [is another one].I have close friends and family who are queer and am increasingly concerned with the way anti-LGBT rhetoric has, I feel, exploded back into popularity. I’m frustrated that the Harris campaign has made an effort to expand rightwards and not leftwards. This will be my second presidential election and I’m tired of having to vote against a candidate instead of voting for one. Nate, 24, Ocean engineer, Portland, Maine‘I no longer trust Trump after January 6’My voting record is quite mixed. I voted for Bush twice, then McCain in 2008, Obama in 2012, Trump in 2016, Biden in 2020 and I plan to vote for Harris in 2024. I disagree with much of the Harris-Walz platform on police reform, abortion and immigration. But after January 6, I no longer trust Trump or anyone allegiant to him in the White House.It feels like an election between poor policy choices or an overpowered executive branch that will stop at nothing to retain control. I will not vote for anyone who called the 2020 election “stolen”. So many of my neighbors and people who go to my church still believe Trump’s lies about the election.Trump is a divisive character in our family’s discussions and we’ve lost relationships with kin because of our not supporting him. We also expect violence, perhaps even at the polling places, regardless of who wins.[Part of our anxiety management strategy] is preparation: we have a few days’ food, water and household needs on-hand, and we’ll have a full tank of gas if we need to leave town. Some is avoidance. We live in a very Trump-heavy area, lots of Trump yard signs. I realized the other day that I’ve drunk every day for the last three weeks. I’ve made a point of walking every day and doing some kind of exercise. But really nothing can fully prepare us. An anonymous male IT worker in his 40s, from Missouri More

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      US presidential election updates: Harris and Trump hit Wisconsin as data shows almost 60m Americans have voted

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      With less than a week to go until the 2024 election, more than 57.5 million Americans have already voted, according to the Election Lab at the University of Florida. The number represents more than a third of the total turnout for the 2020 elections – it is hard to say what it means, as 2020 saw a high number of mail-in votes because of the Covid pandemic, but turnout in some states indicates that the Republican push for supporters to vote early is working.Dressed in an orange hi-vis vest after a campaign stunt in a garbage truck, Republican nominee Donald Trump used a rally in Green Bay, Wisconsin, to take aim at the Democrats over Joe Biden’s “garbage” comments, thanked sanitation workers and promised to protect women “whether they like it or not”.Elsewhere in Wisconsin, Kamala Harris appealed to first-time voters, for whom she said the issues of climate change, gun control, and abortion access are “not political. This is your lived experience.” She was speaking shortly after a new CNN poll showed her six points ahead of Trump in the state.Here’s what else happened on Wednesday:Kamala Harris election news and updates

      Harris spoke in Harrisburg, the Pennsylvania state capital, which is in one of the few counties that voted for Joe Biden in 2020. Polls show a tied race in Pennsylvania, which both campaigns are competing fiercely for. The path to winning 270 electoral votes is much more difficult for the candidate who loses Pennsylvania. Harris did not mention the racist remark about Puerto Rico made by a comedian at Trump’s Madison Square Garden rally on Sunday, but the state’s sizeable Latino and Puerto Rican population could be a decisive voting bloc.

      The former Republican governor of California Arnold Schwarzenegger has announced that he is backing Harris in next week’s election. In a long post on X, Schwarzenegger, 77, said that while he doesn’t “really do endorsements”, he felt compelled to formally endorse Harris and her pick for vice-president, Tim Walz.

      In an op-ed for the Guardian, Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders addressed progressives’ concerns about voting for Harris given the Biden administration’s stance on Israel’s war on Gaza. “I understand that there are millions of Americans who disagree with Joe Biden and Kamala Harris on the terrible war in Gaza. I am one of them,” he writes, adding that “on this issue, Donald Trump and his rightwing friends are worse.”
      Donald Trump election news and updates

      Before his Green Bay rally, refused to apologise for the comments made about Puerto Rico at his Madison Square Garden rally, instead repeating his assertion that he did not know who the comedian was or how he got booked. “He’s a comedian, what can I tell you? I know nothing about him. I don’t know why he’s there.”

      A Pennsylvania judge on Wednesday sided with Trump’s campaign and agreed to extend an in-person voting option in suburban Philadelphia, where long lines on the final day led to complaints voters were being disfranchised by an unprepared election office.

      The House speaker, Mike Johnson, said there would be “massive” healthcare changes if Trump wins next Tuesday, including abolishing Obamacare. “Healthcare reform’s going to be a big part of the agenda,” Johnson, speaking at a rally in Pennsylvania on Monday, told the crowd. “When I say we’re going to have a very aggressive first 100 days agenda, we got a lot of things still on the table.”
      Elsewhere on the campaign trail

      A Republican former congressional candidate was charged with stealing ballots during a test of a voting system in Madison county, Indiana, state police said on Tuesday. During the test on 3 October, which involved four voting machines and 136 candidate ballots marked for testing, officials discovered that two ballots were missing, according to the Indiana state police.

      A majority of voters in swing states do not believe Trump will accept defeat if he loses next week’s presidential election and fear that his supporters will turn to violence in an attempt to install him in power, a new poll suggests.

      The pace of US economic growth slowed over the summer but continued its two-year expansion, according to data released on Wednesday. US gross domestic product (GDP) – a broad measure of economic health – rose by 2.8% in the third quarter, short of economists’ expectations of 3.1%, and down from the previous quarter’s 3% reading.

      Officials in south-west Washington were able to salvage almost 500 damaged ballots from a ballot box that was set on fire on Monday in what officials have called an attack on democracy. An unknown number of ballots were destroyed when someone placed incendiary devices in a drop box in Vancouver, Washington, while three ballots were damaged in a fire at a box in nearby Portland, Oregon. Those fires and one other are linked, officials have said.
      Read more about the 2024 US election:

      Presidential poll tracker

      Harris and Trump policies

      What to know about early voting More

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      Harris hails first-time and gen Z voters at Wisconsin rally: ‘I’m so proud of you’

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      Kamala Harris warned a crowd that time was running out at a get-out-the-vote event in Madison, Wisconsin, on Wednesday, joined by a lineup of folk and pop musicians including Remi Wolf, Gracie Abrams and Mumford & Sons.“We have six days left in one of the most consequential elections of our lifetime,” the vice-president and Democratic nominee told the crowd, denouncing Donald Trump and issuing a dire warning about the consequences of a second Trump presidency.“On day one Donald Trump would walk into office with an enemies list,” said Harris, before launching into a speech highlighting her policy planks, including a proposal to cut taxes on small businesses and to expand healthcare coverage for families caring for an elderly parent at home. To prolonged applause, Harris rallied the crowd in support of abortion rights, vowing to sign protections for reproductive healthcare into law.As she has often during her campaign, Harris projected a centrist image, pledging “to listen to experts, to those who will be impacted by the decisions I make, and to people who disagree with me”.During her speech, protesters in two different sections of the crowd interrupted her to draw attention to Israel’s war in Gaza, shouting “free Palestine” and unfurling banners.Pausing to address the demonstrators, Harris said: “We all want the war in Gaza to end and get the hostages out as soon as possible, and I will do everything in my power to make it heard and known.” She added, to cheers: “Everyone has a right to be heard, but right now I am speaking.”Harris has repeatedly visited Wisconsin, a key swing state where elections are decided by the razor-thin margins. She has paid special attention to Madison, and its suburbs, which reliably turn out overwhelming majorities for Democratic party candidates in races that generate unusually high turnout. In the 2020 presidential election, voter turnout in Dane county reached 89%.The campaign has invested in youth organizing in Wisconsin, hiring seven full-time campus organizers and a youth organizing coordinator. To broad applause, Ty Schanhofer, a first-time voter and student at the University of Wisconsin, introduced Harris and encouraged students to vote early.

      Don’t miss important US election coverage. Get our free app and sign up for election alerts
      “I love your generation, I just love you guys,” said Harris, during the rally, praising young people for being “rightly impatient for change” and enumerating a list of challenges, including the climate crisis and school shootings, that have come to define the gen Z experience. “I see your power, and I’m so proud of you. Can we hear it for our first-time voters!”The former lieutenant governor Mandela Barnes spoke at the rally too, highlighting the narrow margins that have come to define statewide elections in Wisconsin.“I want us to feel joy once again,” said Barnes, who ran for a seat in the US Senate and lost by one point to Ron Johnson, the incumbent Republican who has bolstered Donald Trump’s wildest conspiracy theories – including his claims of a stolen election in 2020. Chris LaCivita, a senior staffer on the Johnson campaign, is co-manager of Trump’s 2024 presidential campaign.The campaign punctuated speeches including Barnes’s with musical acts to rally the crowd.“We have values and ideas that deserve a platform,” said the singer-songwriter Gracie Abrams, a popular gen Z musician whose performance drew uproarious applause. “Our participation and our vote have never been more crucial.” Abrams was likely a draw for some in the audience, which leaned young tonight.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionThe campaign also offered the elder millennials in the crowd something of their own: a performance by the British folk-pop band Mumford & Sons, whose lead singer announced to some surprise that he has voted in California, where he was born.Harris has featured a lineup of celebrity endorsers and performers at her rallies during the 2024 election cycle. In Texas last week, Beyoncé herself appeared to endorse Harris’s presidential bid, and Jennifer Lopez is scheduled to appear with Harris at a rally later this week. The star-studded series of events could give the Harris campaign a boost. When Harris campaigned in Eau Claire, Wisconsin, the folk band Bon Iver – from the Eau Claire area – opened for her.The Madison crowd was energetic on Wednesday night, but with less than a week to go before election day, some Democrats at the venue seemed anxious.“I’ve been making calls for Harris,” said Mary Ann Olson, a retired teacher, who waited in pouring rain for the rally. “If she doesn’t win, and I didn’t do anything, I think I would hate myself.”Olson’s daughter, Chelsea, said she was “really stressed out”, adding: “I’m not sure I can handle four more years of Donald Trump.” More

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      Harris hits critical battleground Pennsylvania six days before election

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      Kamala Harris continued to make her closing argument to voters just six days before voting ends, reminding Americans in what is perhaps the most critical battleground state that two very different futures for the United States could be around the corner.“We know who Donald Trump is. This is someone who is not thinking about how to make your life better,” she said in remarks that lasted about half an hour to a packed crowd at the Pennsylvania Farm Show Complex.“This is someone who is unstable, obsessed with revenge, consumed with grievance and out for unchecked power.”“In less than 90 days, either he or I will be in the Oval Office,” she added.Harris spoke in Harrisburg, the state capital, which is one of the few counties in the middle of the state that voted for Joe Biden in 2020. A faint whiff of livestock hung over the packed rally, which included people holding signs saying “Harris-burg” and “If Kamala was a man, she’d be THE MAN”, a reference to a Taylor Swift song.The event was part of a campaign blitz for the vice-president before voting ends 5 November. She and Tim Walz, her vice-presidential candidate, were both in Pennsylvania on Wednesday. Harris also traveled to North Carolina and Wisconsin.Polls show a tied race in Pennsylvania, which both campaigns are competing fiercely for. The path to winning 270 electoral votes is much more difficult for the candidate who loses Pennsylvania.Harris did not mention a racist remark about Puerto Rico made by a comedian before Trump’s rally at Madison Square Garden on Sunday. Pennsylvania has a sizeable Latino and Puerto Rican population and could be a decisive voting bloc in the election.At the rally, Harris did not directly mention Joe Biden’s comments on Tuesday in which he appeared to call Trump supporters “garbage”. Biden later clarified that he had “meant to say” that a pro-Trump comedian’s “hateful rhetoric” about Puerto Rico was “garbage”. But before getting on Air Force Two on Wednesday, Harris said: “I strongly disagree with any criticism of people based on who they voted for.”Harris seemed to allude to the controversy at the end of her remarks, saying: “In these next six days, let us be intentional about building community. Let us please be intentional about building coalitions and let us remember we have so much more in common than what separates us.”Minerva Ortiz-Garcia, a 68-year-old flight attendant who lives in Easton, Pennsylvania, carried a small Puerto Rican flag as she wandered through the crowd before Harris spoke.“I feel horrible. I’m Puerto Rican I actually started to cry” after hearing the comments at Trump’s rally, she said. “How could someone say that about an island that is trying to survive [Hurricane] Maria?” Ortiz-Garcia said she thought many Latino voters were waiting for Harris to speak to them.“I think that people want her to say something directly,” she said.Harris was also briefly interrupted several times by protesters, who could be heard screaming “genocide” and “war criminal”.As cheers of “USA! USA! USA!” nearly drowned out the protests, Harris said “ours is about a fight for democracy and your right to be heard. That is what is on the line in this election,” she said. “Look, everybody has a right to be heard, but right now I am speaking.” When a protester again interrupted a few minutes later, Harris again emphasized the stakes of the election, saying: “At this particular moment, it should be emphasized that unlike Donald Trump, I don’t believe people who disagree with me are the enemy from within. He wants to put them in jail. I’ll give them a seat at the table.”The event in Harrisburg was the first political rally Corine Wherley, a 38-year-old librarian from Harrisburg, had ever attended. She said that she was so alarmed after watching Trump’s Madison Square Garden rally that she wanted to come.“A lot of it was the rhetoric around ‘this secret’ and other things like that they’re planning on doing,” she said, referring to Trump’s comment that he has a “little secret” with House Speaker Mike Johnson, that many took to be a plan to contest the election. “They’re like: ‘I can do whatever I want’ and I think that’s what scares me.”Shawna Barnes, a 45-year-old healthcare worker from Philadelphia, said she’s concerned that men aren’t supporting Harris in this election. When she’s knocked on doors, she’s noticed that the women are often all-in, but the men are “iffy”.“Black and brown women are going to come out and support. White women of course are going to support. The men are just kind of like afraid,” she said as the song Mr Brightside by the Killers blasted on the sound system. “I don’t think it’s about gender. I just think it’s fear.” More

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      Judge extends in-person voting option in Pennsylvania after Trump lawsuit

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      A Pennsylvania judge on Wednesday sided with Donald Trump’s campaign and agreed to extend an in-person voting option in suburban Philadelphia, where long lines on the final day led to complaints voters were being disenfranchised by an unprepared election office.A lawsuit demanding an extension of Tuesday’s 5pm deadline in Bucks county until today was filed this morning after long queues outside the county’s election offices on the last day for applications led to security guards cutting off the line and telling some of those waiting they would not be able to apply.Videos of the scenes were widely circulated on social media, fuelling rumours of voter suppression.The Trump campaign was joined by the Republican National Committee (RNC) and the GOP Senate candidate Dave McCormick in the lawsuit alleging that voters waiting outside election offices for mail ballots were turned away empty-handed and ordered to leave after the deadline expired at 5pm on Tuesday.“This is a direct violation of Pennsylvanians’ rights to cast their ballot – and all voters have a right to STAY in line,” the Trump campaign said.Judge Jeffrey Trauger said in a one-page order that Bucks county voters who want to apply for an early mail ballot now have until Friday.The queues for late mail ballots were a result of Pennsylvania not having an early on-site voting system at designated spots, as is the case in some other states. Instead, voters can apply for ballots on-demand at election offices before filling them out and submitting them on the spot, a procedure that takes about 10 minutes.The flood of late applicants overwhelmed electoral workers in Bucks county’s administration building in Doylestown, leading to a long queue which was cut off at around 2.45pm on Tuesday, according to CBS.

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      Michael Whatley, the chair of the Republican National Committee, told a rally in Allentown, Pennsylvania on Tuesday that Democratic election officials were trying to suppress Republican votes.“Democrat election officials are seeing our numbers. They’re seeing our turnout. They are seeing us breaking early vote records across Pennsylvania,” he said. “They are terrified. And they want to stop our momentum. We are not going to let them suppress our votes.”In a statement, Bucks county admitted there had been some “miscommunication” from officials, resulting in those waiting “briefly being told they could not be accommodated”. But this was subsequently corrected, allowing them to submit applications.“Contrary to what is being depicted on social media, if you are in line by 5pm for an on-demand mail-in ballot application, you will have the opportunity to submit your application for a mail-in ballot,” the county said.The legal action raised the prospect of further possible controversy after election day in Pennsylvania – arguably the most important battleground state in next Tuesday’s election – after Trump baselessly accused election officials of cheating.“Pennsylvania is cheating, and getting caught, at large scale levels rarely seen before,” Trump posted on his Truth Social platform, without providing evidence. “REPORT CHEATING TO AUTHORITIES. Law Enforcement must act, NOW!”The allegation was dismissed by Pennsylvania’s Democratic governor, Josh Shapiro, who accused the former president of seeking to undermine public trust in the integrity of election officials.“In 2020, Donald Trump attacked our elections over and over,” posted Shapiro, who was Pennsylvania’s attorney general four years ago when Trump tried to overturn Joe Biden’s victory. “He’s now trying to use the same playbook to stoke chaos … we will again have a free and fair, safe and secure election – and the will of the people will be respected.”Most polls show Kamala Harris with a tiny lead over Trump in Pennsylvania, which has more electoral college votes than any other battleground state and which both candidates have campaigned in more than any other state. More

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      Biden’s ‘garbage’ comments gaffe hastens Harris’s slow-mo breakup with president

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      The delicate dance by Kamala Harris’s presidential campaign to simultaneously show deference to Joe Biden, separate herself from his presidency and thwart his ambition to campaign for her has reached a critical juncture as the 2024 election approaches its climax.The steps of the dance, which has been ongoing since Harris assumed the Democratic party nomination in August and involves efforts to shield the 81-year-old president’s ego and feelings, became even more leaden overnight on Tuesday after Biden appeared to call supporters of Donald Trump “garbage”.Though he clarified that he didn’t mean Trump supporters but rather their attitude towards Latinos (the official transcript had Biden saying, “The only garbage I see floating out there is his supporter’s – his – his – his demonization of Latinos is unconscionable, and it’s un-American”), the comment nevertheless set off echoes of Hillary Clinton’s infamous “basket of deplorables” put-down of a section of Trump’s supporters in 2016.In doing so, it threatened to at least partly undo the Republican campaign’s self-inflicted damage caused by a guest at the Trump rally on Sunday who described Puerto Rico as a “floating island of garbage”, as well as a string of racist remarks about Latinos, Black people and Jews.Trump’s campaign immediately sought to distance itself from Tony Hinchcliffe’s remarks and to repair any loss of support in the critical 222 area code, a largely Latino corridor in Pennsylvania, a state where upwards of 400,000 Puerto Rican American voters reside. Trump implausibly claimed to the Fox News primetime anchor Sean Hannity that he had “no idea” who Hinchcliffe was (“Somebody said there was a comedian that joked about Puerto Rico or something”), despite the fact he was booked at Trump’s signature rally, that Hinchcliffe’s podcast Kill Tony has a huge fanbase among Trump supporters, and that the rally organizers admitted they vetted each of the guests’ speeches.But Biden’s latest incident of apparently misspeaking – last week he said of Trump, “We got to lock him up,” before immediately adding, “Politically lock him up” – may seal the deal when it comes to Harris’s willingness to allow Biden to campaign for her.Harris found herself having to address the latest gaffe on the the tarmac at Joint Base Andrews on Wednesday, where she noted that Biden had “clarified his comments”, and added: “I strongly disagree with any criticism of people based on who they voted for.” Asked if the incident could increase the country’s political divisiveness ahead of the elections, Harris said: “I’ve been very clear with the American public – I respect the challenges that people face, I respect the fact that we all have so much more in common than what separates us.”While Biden’s offers to join her, Axios reported, have for some time met with: “We’ll get back to you,” the veteran Democrat strategist Hank Sheinkopf said it was now almost certain that Harris will aim not to be seen with Biden at all.“Let him be president but keep him away from the campaign, because if he shows up it gives Trump a new target to take attention away from Harris,” he said. “So long as people focus on Harris, they won’t remember Biden, and Trump won’t be able to bring the two together as the Biden-Harris administration.”In public comments, Harris has sought to defend her record as his vice-president, but also to separate herself from Biden – whose approval rating stands at 39%, the lowest of the past seven US presidents at the end of their terms – in order to present herself as a candidate of change who will “turn the page”, not just on the Trump era but on the Biden one as well.Harris aides have likened the Biden-Harris relationship to a slow-moving breakup, according to Axios, which quoted an aide as saying: “He’s a reminder of the last four years, not the new way forward.”Biden’s team have not taken the hint. Biden aides reportedly still believe “Scranton Joe” could still help Harris with white, working-class voters in the Rust belt – and caught her campaign by surprise when they scheduled a Biden campaign stop in Pittsburgh over the weekend. Axios quoted a source saying: “They’re too much in their feelings” – and indeed the former House speaker Nancy Pelosi, a key figure in Biden’s dramatic withdrawal from a second term bid in July, recently confirmed to the Guardian she had not spoken to him since.The dynamic of president and vice-president is not set. Al Gore refused to let Bill Clinton campaign for him in 2000, a decision widely viewed as detrimental to Gore’s campaign: he narrowly lost to George W Bush. And the Bush campaign strategist Karl Rove predicted back in September that it was “highly unlikely” Biden would make campaign appearances for Harris, predicting they would let him out on the campaign trail so that his feelings don’t get hurt, but that the approach would be: “Let’s get it done and get it out of the way so we can say we’ve done it.”That deference may now be exhausted. “Vice-President Harris is grateful for President Biden’s support and appreciates that he is campaigning for her,” the Harris campaign spokesperson Ian Sams told the New York Times on Wednesday. It felt like cool understatement.“When Biden shows up it creates chaos for her,” said Sheinkopf. “She has to be focused on herself and the electorate focused on her.” Keeping Biden as far away from Harris as possible is, he says, “critically important as this comes to an end”. More