AP – Former United States (US) president Donald Trump is predicting America’s destruction if his fellow Republicans don’t deliver a massive electoral wave tomorrow.
Democrats, led by US President Joe Biden and two other former presidents, are warning that abortion rights, Social Security and even democracy itself are at stake.
Three of the six living presidents delivered dire closing messages on Saturday in battleground Pennsylvania entering the final weekend of the 2022 midterm elections, but their words echoed across the country as millions of Americans cast ballots to decide the balance of power in Washington and in key state capitals. Polls across America will close tomorrow, but more than 39 million people have already voted.
Yesterday, Biden campaigned in suburban New York, while Trump was headed to Florida.
“If you want to stop the destruction of our country and save the American dream, then Tuesday you must vote Republican in a giant red wave,” Trump told thousands of cheering supporters as he campaigned on Saturday in western Pennsylvania, describing the US as “a country in decline”.
Earlier in the day, Biden shared the stage with former president Barack Obama in Philadelphia, the former running mates campaigning together for the first time since Biden took office. In neighbouring New York, even former president Bill Clinton, largely absent from national politics in recent years, was out defending his party.
“Sulking and moping is not an option,” Obama charged. “On Tuesday, let’s make sure our country doesn’t get set back 50 years.”
Not everyone, it seemed, was on message as the weekend began.
Even before arriving in Pennsylvania, Biden was dealing with a fresh political mess after upsetting some in his party for promoting plans to shut down fossil fuel plants in favour of green energy. While he made the comments in California the day before, the fossil fuel industry is a major employer in Pennsylvania.
Chair of the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee Senator Joe Manchin said the president owed coal workers across the country an apology. He called Biden’s comments “offensive and disgusting”.
Trump seized on the riff in western Pennsylvania, charging that Biden “has resumed the war on coal, your coal”.
