MANCHESTER: Five states in one day, addressing euphoric crowds of thousands — Donald Trump reluctantly brought to a close an exhilarating and extraordinary 511-day election campaign that has upended America.
If he wins the White House on Tuesday, it’s a road show that Americans can only expect more of: his unique blend of showmanship, eye-raising insults of his opponents and hyperbolic promises of salvation.
The 70-year-old man who has joked about taking a long vacation if he doesn’t win must be exhausted, but the Republican reveled Monday in the adulation of crowd after crowd as he battled to the very last minute to pull off a shock upset against Democrat Hillary Clinton.
“Dream big because with your vote, we’re just one day away from the change you have been waiting for your entire life,” he bellowed to around 10,000 supporters in Manchester at his penultimate rally.
“We are going to win the great state of New Hampshire, and we are going to win back the White House!” he cried — his rallying cry the same at each rally, just tailor-made for the state of the moment.
With the wildest presidential race in generations nearly in the rear-view mirror, Trump has stalked battlegrounds and Democrat-leaning states, desperate to persuade Americans they would be better served by a political outsider than establishment favorite Clinton.
“Our failed political establishment has delivered nothing but poverty, nothing but problems, nothing but losses,” he told 5,000 people in Raleigh, North Carolina, reducing the essence of his long and controversial campaign into a handful of sound bites.
“They get rich by making America poor.”
Most final polls hand Clinton a broad but shallow lead, but if Trump loses, it won’t be for lack of trying.
Ensconced in the leather-seated luxury of his personal 757, and a brief replacement presumably when his pilot exhausted his mandated flight hours, the Manhattan real estate magnate jetted to a dozen cities in two days.
It was a non-stop cross-country endeavor, carpet bombing Democratic strongholds like Colorado, Michigan, Minnesota, Pennsylvania and Virginia in a bid to flip blue states, while holding all the ground his predecessor Mitt Romney won in 2012.
