with CHARLIE HARPER

This arrived in email-boxes all across the US on Monday and Tuesday, after Donald Trump worked part of a shift at a MacDonalds restaurant:

“Friend,

“I just left McDonald’s. That was fun!

“I am the first and only 2024 presidential nominee to work at McDonald’s.

“This is the great work of the American people. I worked the fry cooker, bagged some meals, and served some hungry folks at the drive-thru.

“Under the Harris Regime, great American burgers and fries have only gotten more expensive.

“Prices are through the roof, and I won’t stand for it.”

Recipients of the Trump campaign’s mass mailings were also offered the opportunity, via separate emails, to donate five dollars to his campaign in order to compete to “win an Elon Musk dark MAGA hat, signed by me”.

Both solicitations were signed by Trump.

The Democrats and Kamala Harris reply with warnings of the apocalypse that a Trump victory would unleash. “Just listen to him,” they repeat. “Is that what you want?”

The US presidential election is finally entering the home stretch. It seems that most voters have made up their minds by now in an election clearly dominated and largely defined by Trump. He is who he is, and people have decided how they feel about him.

Whether or not Harris and the Democrats like it, the reality is that like Joe Biden did four years ago, Kamala Harris will win – if she wins – simply because she isn’t Donald Trump.

Who will win? Two veteran politicians, both very successful in their public life and representing two constituencies that could hardly be more different from each other, offered their forecasts during the past week.

These forecasts differed very little. Perhaps that wasn’t too surprising in light of the following.

Americans for months have been besieged by several sources essentially serving up the following message. Polls, and the two major political parties themselves, have portrayed this year’s presidential races as not only existentially vital for America’s future but also too close to call.

The numbers and percentages have bounced around since Biden left the race three months ago, and the Democratic national convention seemed to solidify a boost for Harris that has largely remained intact. But what the polls call the “margin of error” for their statistical analyses has remained steady.

It all means that few pundits are forecasting a winner at this point.

Both parties, seeing a fundraising and consciousness-raising opportunity in portraying the contest as virtually tied, have amplified the pollsters’ views about the closeness of the race.

Maybe that’s true. But while in most of the American presidential races this century the recorded vote totals fell within the ‘margin of error,’ they have in fact not been as close as was forecast when the state votes in the electoral college were tallied.

It was precisely that electoral vote tally that the Trump-incited mob tried to impede and change when they stormed the US capitol on January 6, 2021. If either Harris or Trump were to win Pennsylvania and three of the other six “battleground states”, their electoral vote total would almost certainly rise to over 300, well above the 270 votes needed to secure victory.

In 2020, Joe Biden garnered 306 electoral college votes en route to victory. Trump won 304 four years earlier. Previously, Barack Obama rolled to much bigger wins, garnering 365 (2008) and 332 (2012) as he twice earned a four-year stay in the White House. But none of them surpassed 53 percent of the overall vote.

Harris is virtually assured of winning the popular vote, as Hillary Clinton did in 2016 as she nevertheless lost the election. The Democrats are certain to run up big popular vote margins in the big cities of the American Northeast, Illinois and California that will far outstrip corresponding GOP gains in Texas and Florida.

As early voting has begun in most states, the suspense rises. Election Night should be full of drama.

Back to the two local officials. Paul is the county executive of a solidly red district in what is sometimes called the “near-Midwest” where he is the senior elected official and exerts primary executive authority. There is a county legislature, but ultimate power practically resides with the county executive.

Betty is chair of a five-person elected county board in the mid-Atlantic region which exercises overall authority over a powerful but unelected county manager. This Democrat-dominated district is overwhelmingly blue.

“I have met Trump a couple of times,” Paul was saying last week. “We were able to speak together backstage at one of his rallies, and again not long afterward at a big dinner honoring one of my Republican colleagues.

“In person, Trump is really quite different from the big, bombastic personality that we all see on TV and at his events. He’s actually rather soft-spoken, not at all unprepared for some chat with the people he is likely to encounter at such meetings, and he is surprisingly thoughtful.

“He asked me a couple of questions that showed both that he was briefed and that he was curious about what I would say in reply.

“I have to say,” Paul continued, “that if I were advising him, I’d suggest that Trump show more of that personality on the big stages where he is always appearing. There’s no question that the bombast brings out the big crowds and stirs up his followers. But he has to attract at least some voters beyond that loyal base of his.”

As for the coming election, Paul said “I have no idea. I do think that if I had to place a bet right now, I’d say Harris will win. There is a bit of fatigue with Trump. He hasn’t really changed that much in the ten years he’s been on the national stage, except that he’s gotten sharper, more resentful, too reliant on old language and old grievances. He really needs a refresh.

“I’m frankly a bit tired of it myself, though I do agree with his policies and I agree that Biden and Harris haven’t done well in too many areas. Yes, the economy and immigration are the big ones, but the US is facing too many crises overseas too, and the Democrats have to own that.”

Betty, like many Democrats, is fed up with Trump and the Republicans who “have cringed in the corner, enabling him, while Trump rants. They’re cowards. They should stand up to his bullying behavior, and speak out loud what they tell me and others when there are no microphones around.

“I like Harris,” Betty continued. “She’s a fighter. She will win. I especially like the fact that she doesn’t just wave off Trump as some kind of aberration, almost a curiosity whom the voters will clearly reject. That’s what Hillary Clinton did in 2016, and she lost an election she should have won easily.

“But at the same time, it’s true that Biden benefitted from COVID. It permitted him, as the Republicans correctly said, to campaign basically, from his basement in Delaware. And Trump handled that tragic pandemic which killed so many people with such casual callousness… Don’t get me started on that.”

But Betty’s community is also close enough to Washington DC that she is genuinely concerned about security on and after Election Night.

“We have to learn from what happened on January 6,” she said. “I see real trouble on the horizon. The outcome that feels impossible to expect next month is exactly the one we have seen in America in every election in my lifetime except the most recent one: An acceptance by the loser, gracious statements by the winner, and getting on with the business of a peaceful transition to the new administration.

“Trump is promising more of the same trouble he unleashed four years ago. I believe him.” Betty has spent a lot of time and effort during the past several months directing county emergency management and law enforcement officials to update contingency plans for mayhem in the streets of her county.

She has reached out to state and federal authorities for their advice and support, and has convened several relevant planning sessions. “I think it would be altogether irresponsible not to plan for Trump and his supporters to wreak more havoc after the election than they did four years ago.”