Trump is getting wilder and wilder, but the White House race remains a toss-up

Democrats have bet the destiny of the White House on the premise that once voters remember the chaos and divisiveness of Donald Trump’s presidency, he’d suffer an election-defining slump.

Wild weeks of outlandish rhetoric by the ex-president have revived memories of the cacophony of his four White House years and shattered perceptions that he’s running a more disciplined campaign than in 2020 or 2016. But the nature of the race — a toss-up contest in swing states — has not budged.

Trump has peddled baseless rumors that immigrants in Ohio are eating pets. He’s warned that Jewish voters will be to blame if he loses in November. He’s refused to openly condemn a protege in the North Carolina gubernatorial contest who described himself as “black Nazi” on a porn site, as CNN’s KFile reported last week. Trump also reacted to a second apparent assassination attempt by implying that Vice President Kamala Harris and Democrats are inviting such attacks when they highlight his refusal to accept his 2020 election loss and say he’s a danger to democracy.

Despite everything, the ex-president remains locked in what CNN senior political data reporter Harry Enten described Sunday as the closest presidential race since Democrat John F. Kennedy’s narrow win over Vice President Richard Nixon.

Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer, whose political network will be critical to Harris’ hopes in the must-win state for Democrats, said on CNN’s “State of the Union” on Sunday, “I can just tell you this: This election is going to be close. We have always known that.” She added: “In a state like Michigan or Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, we know that this is going to be a close race.”

The tight nature of the contest was highlighted by the candidates’ remarks and strategies over a weekend of tense campaign exchanges.

Harris suggested that the ex-president was “looking for an excuse” to avoid debating her after she accepted CNN’s invitation to a second contest on October 23. The former president, meanwhile, tried to reduce the wide gender gap with women that threatens his election with a frantic Truth Social post in all caps. Trump vowed: “I will protect women at a level never seen before. They will finally be healthy, hopeful, safe and secure. Their lives will be happy, beautiful and great again!”

On Sunday, in a rare moment of introspection, Trump told Sharyl Attkisson on “Full Measure” that he doesn’t seem himself running again in 2028 if he loses in November. “I think … that will be it. I don’t see that at all,” he said.No clear leader
But despite the rising heat on the campaign trail, the race remains where it has been for weeks: deadlocked.

National polls have ticked up slightly for Harris since her debate with Trump earlier this month, although there is still no clear leader. The vice president is at 50% compared with Trump’s 47% in the latest CNN Poll of Polls average. The survey incorporates five polls conducted entirely after the debate on September 10. One poll added to the average on Sunday, from NBC News, showed Harris at 49% support to Trump’s 44% — the ex-president’s lowest level of support in a poll that meets CNN’s standards since Harris replaced President Joe Biden as the Democratic candidate in July.

While Harris’ improving trajectory is a reason for optimism for her supporters, the presidency will be decided in the Electoral College. That puts great importance on results in a handful of states, including Pennsylvania, Georgia, Nevada, Wisconsin, Michigan and North Carolina, where polling averages put the contest within a few points either way. As few as several hundred thousand voters could have the power to choose between the hugely contrasting paths that a Trump or Harris victory would mean for the United States and the rest of the world.So why does the contest remain so tantalizingly close?

Trump’s comeback attempt is, after all, a stunning story considering he left office in disgrace after inciting an attack by his supporters on the US Capitol on January 6, 2021, and after refusing to accept he lost the election. Trump, who was twice impeached, is a convicted felon who is facing more grave criminal charges. It’s inconceivable that any other politician could have survived such a torrent of scandal and still be within reach of the Oval Office again.

A core principle of the Biden campaign before the president’s departure from the race was that once voters saw the unfiltered bombast of Trump, their memories of his tumultuous term would return and he’d lose. But Biden’s failure at the CNN debate in June, when his advanced age was painfully obvious, obliterated the comparison. Harris, who turned the race on its head when she replaced Biden, has tried to highlight the contrast between her pragmatism and Trump’s extremism. At last month’s Democratic National Convention in Chicago, she set up a narrative that Trump was an “unserious man” who poses an “extremely serious” threat. But the best spin on the Harris campaign with just over six weeks to go is that the vice president has returned a race that Democrats looked very likely to lose back into the neck-and-neck fight that it always seemed likely to be.