30 2GM Wednesday October 14 2020 | the times
Wo r l d
President Trump is scrambling to
defend states he won comfortably in
2016 while Joe Biden expands the
election battlefield fuelled by a large
fundraising advantage.
Mr Trump is heading tomorrow to
Iowa, which he won by more than nine
points four years ago, and two days later
to Georgia, which last backed a Demo-
crat for president in 1992. Polls in both
states point to neck-and-neck races.
Mr Biden, meanwhile, was in Ohio
on Monday for his second visit in a
fortnight to a state Hillary Clinton lost
by eight points but which polls suggest
is within his reach.
With 20 days to go until the election,
the candidates’ choices reveal how the
electoral map has grown to a dozen
states from the expected showdown in
only three midwestern states plus
Florida that were all narrowly seized by
Mr Trump from the Democrats.
Mr Trump, 74, appeared back to
normal form at his rally in Florida on
Monday night, the first since his
Covid-19 diagnosis. He has six rallies on
his schedule this week as he attempts to
claw back Mr Biden’s average ten-point
national polling lead.
There are signs of nervousness
among senior Republicans, who fear
that Mr Trump is leaving it late to win
round undecided voters and allowing
Democrats to target some usually relia-
bly red states, including Alaska, Mon-
tana, Kansas and South Carolina in an
attempt to seize control of the Senate.
One third of seats in the 100-member
body are contested every two years and
Democrats are trying to overturn the
53 to 47 Republican majority, with one
reputable study pointing yesterday to a
net Democrat gain of five.
“Democrats are on fire,” Mitch
McConnell, the Senate majority leader,
was said to have told lobbyists on a
recent call. He is understood to have
urged Republican candidates to use any
means possible to win their seat, code
for distancing themselves from Mr
Trump if it helps.
Although there has been little sign of
this, Martha McSally, a Republican
defending her Senate seat in Arizona,
passed up numerous questions in a TV
debate when asked to say that she was
proud of her support for the president.
“I’m proud that I’m fighting for Arizo-
nans on things like cutting your taxes,”
Ms McSally, 54, said. She has been
behind in every poll since mid-August,
while Mr Biden has a 3.8-point lead in a
state won by Mr Trump by
3.5 points in 2016.
At the start of the year the election
battle was expected to focus on three
midwestern states won by Mr Trump
by a combined 77,744 votes — Michi-
gan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin — as
well as the swing state of Florida. In the
electoral college system that gives each
state a weighted vote, a swing to Mr Bid-
en in these four would hand him the
presidency. The Trump campaign has
put resources into trying to win Minne-
sota and Nevada, which both narrowly
went for Mrs Clinton.
However, Mr Biden’s growing poll
lead amid the president’s handling of
the coronavirus has brought two more
midwestern states flipped by Mr Trump
into play, Iowa and Ohio, and severalSitting in a deckchair next to his golf
cart covered with campaign posters, Ed
McGinty does not hold back from tell-
ing fellow residents of the world’s larg-
est retirement community what he
thinks of President Trump.
In the Villages, a 32sq mile Florida
enclave sold to its 132,000 largely white,
largely conservative population as the
place where “dreams come true”, he has
spent every day of the past three years
protesting against his nightmare presi-
dent.
“Trump is Putin’s bitch” are among
the signs Mr McGinty, 72, props against
his cart but there is one that changes
every day: the US coronavirus death
toll, which stands at just over 215,000.
“The pandemic is probably the big-President Trump tossing masks into the crowd at his campaign rally in Sanford,
President Trump’s proposed Supreme
Court judge refused to say where she
stood on abortion laws as she faced her
first day of questioning from a Senate
panel.
Though support for Amy Coney Bar-
rett from almost all the Republican
majority means that she is likely to be
confirmed by the Senate, Democrats
are determined to highlight what they
believe are her unpopular positions on
abortion and healthcare.
Mrs Barrett, 48, declined to engage
on the subject of abortion, however,
when questioned yesterday by mem-
bers of the Senate judiciary committee.
Asked by Dianne Feinstein, 87, the
judiciary committee’s top Democrat,
whether she believed that Roe v Wade,
Supreme Court choice coy on abortion
the landmark 1973 ruling that struck
down many abortion restrictions, was
correctly decided, Mrs Barrett refused
to answer. She said that she would con-
sider various factors before deciding
whether to overturn precedent.
“I promise to do that for any issue
that comes up, abortion or anything
else,” she said. “I’ll follow the law.”
Mrs Feinstein replied that women
would find it “distressing not to get a
straight answer”.
Mrs Barrett cast her reticence to
answer as part of a broader fidelity to
the law. She said: “Judges cannot wake
up one day and say ‘I have an agenda —
I like guns, I hate guns, I like abortion,
I hate abortion’ and walk in like a royal
queen and impose their will on the
world.”
Many Supreme Court nomineeshave resisted giving answers at their
confirmation hearings when asked how
they would rule on specific questions.
Mrs Barrett also insisted that she had
not given the White House an assur-
ance that she would strike down the
Affordable Care Act, popularly known
as Obamacare. “I was never asked,” she
said. “And if I had, that would have been
a short conversation.”
The hearing opened with friendly
questioning from Lindsey Graham, 65,
the committee’s Republican chairman,
who asked about her “originalist” legal
philosophy, which holds that the con-
stitution and laws should be interpreted
based on their meaning at the time they
were enacted. She said: “That meaning
doesn’t change over time and it’s not for
me to update it or infuse my own policy
views into it.”Henry Zeffman, David Charter
Trump hopes last-gasp tour
more that usually back Republicans,
notably Arizona in the west, and Geor-
gia and North Carolina in the south.
More than 180,000 voters in Georgia
went to the polls when they opened on
Monday, some queueing for five hours.
Mr Biden’s campaign raised a record
$364.5 million in August and is out-
spending Mr Trump almost every-
where. The Trump campaign raised
$210 million. Mrs Clinton’s best month
of fundraising brought in $154 million.
After the cancellation of the second
TV debate tomorrow amid a row over
Mr Trump’s health, the president
eagerly returned to his attacks on Mr
Biden at his Florida rally, highlighting
several recent muddles made by the 77-
year-old Democrat. Mr Biden seemed
to forget the name of the Republican
senator Mitt Romney while talking
about the role of religion in politics,
saying: “I got in trouble when we were
running against that senator who was a
Mormon, the governor.”
Mr Trump, who was said by his doc-
tor to have tested negative for Covid-19
on consecutive days on the rapid but
less reliable antigen test, added: “One
thing with me, the nice part, I went
through it. Now they say I’m immune. I
feel so powerful. I’ll walk into that audi-
ence. I’ll walk in there. I’ll kiss everyone
in that audience. I’ll kiss the guys and
the beautiful women and everybody. I’ll
just give you a big fat kiss.”
Mr Biden turned up in Florida wear-
ing two facemasks. In a speech aimed at
older voters, he told a small, socially-
distanced audience yesterday that Mr
Trump saw them as “expendable...
forgettable... the only senior Trump
cares about is senior Donald Trump”.
He added: “You know, I prayed for his
recovery, when he got Covid, and I
hoped that at least he’d come out of it
somewhat chastened. But what has he
done? He’s just doubled down on the
misinformation he did before and mak-
ing it worse. So many lives have been
lost unnecessarily because this presi-
dent cares more about the stock market
than he does about the wellbeing of
seniors.”
Mr Romney, the Republican candi-
date for president in 2012, yesterday
wrote of his concern that US politics
had become a “vile, vituperative, hate-
filled morass” and said it was “time to
lower the heat”.
Roger Boyes, page 26Grey revolt puts president
United States
David Charter Washington
gest vote loser for him right now,” Mr
McGinty says. “If you’re still voting for
Trump in 2020 you’re one of four
things: a racist, a bigot, a greedy son of
a bitch — or just stupid.”
Florida is a crucial election state and
its “grey vote” a key constituency. In
2016 Mr Trump won the state by
1.2 percentage points over Hillary Clin-
ton. However, he scored a 17-point
advantage among voters over 65.
Statistically the candidate who wins
this state on November 3 will win the
election. Democrats and Republicans
know how crucial Florida is: Mr Trump
held his first post-Covid infection rally
here on Monday and Joe Biden flew in
yesterday. However, polls show that the
president is on the back foot in the
Villages, where Republicans outnum-
ber Democrats by more than two toJacqui Goddard The Villages, Florida
On the road
Mon Florida (29 electoral college seats)
Tue Pennsylvania (20)
Wed Iowa (6)
Thu North Carolina (15)
Fri Florida again
Fri Georgia (16)Trump’s 2016 victory margin
Biden’s average 2020 poll lead1.2
4.70.7
- 2
9.4
1.13.7
3.15.1
Source:FiveThirtyEight0.6Joe Biden played it safe by wearing
two facemasks in Florida yesterday