Online
\nWARM SPRINGS
\nJoe Biden flayed Donald Trump on Tuesday with accusations the US President has surrendered to a surging pandemic, as the Democrat took his campaign to the Republican stronghold of Georgia one week before the election.
\nWhile the former vice president went on electoral offense, seeking to expand the campaign map and his state-by-state path to victory on November 3, Trump barnstormed the Midwest in a last-gasp bid to shore up states that voted for him in 2016 but which polls show are tilting Biden\u2019s way.
\nAnd with the campaign narrowing down to its final days, Biden tapped one of his top surrogates, popular former president Barack Obama, to deliver a closing argument for Democrats in Florida, a must-win swing state for Trump if he is to defy the odds and earn reelection.
\nBiden, buoyed by poll numbers that show him leading the incumbent, drilled in on Trump\u2019s coronavirus response, reminding voters that Trump\u2019s chief of staff Mark Meadows conceded at the weekend that \u201cwe\u2019re not going to control the pandemic.\u201d
\nSpeaking in Warm Springs, Georgia, Biden branded the response \u201ca capitulation\u201d by a White House that \u201cnever really tried\u201d to halt a pandemic which has now killed more than 226,000 Americans.
\nInstead of acting as a wartime president to battle Covid-19 as he promised, Trump \u201cshrugged, he swaggered and he surrendered,\u201d Biden said.
\n\u201cI\u2019m here to tell you: We can and we will control this virus,\u201d he added.
\nTrump defeated Hillary Clinton by five points in Georgia in 2016, but polls have the 74-year-old running neck and neck with Biden in the Peach State.
\nGeorgia last voted for a Democrat for president nearly three decades ago — Bill Clinton in 1992 — but the Biden campaign has high hopes of flipping the state, and also winning its two US Senate seats which are up for grabs.
\nBiden, 77, held a socially distanced drive-in rally later in Atlanta, Georgia\u2019s largest city, where he repeated some of the same attacks on Trump but also urged voters to recognize how vital the state suddenly is to winning the White House.
\n\u201cWe win Georgia, we win everything!\u201d Biden said, his voice rising. \u201cThese are the final days, so keep that sense of empowerment with you, that sense of optimism.\u201d
\nTrump meanwhile maintained his hectic campaign pace, holding an open-air rally in Michigan followed by a similar one in Wisconsin and then Nebraska. Attendees did not practice social distancing, and many were maskless.
\nMichigan and Wisconsin are Midwestern battlegrounds which he won by razor thin margins four years ago, but Trump insisted \u201cwe\u2019re leading almost everywhere\u201d thanks to his frantic campaign schedule.
\n\u201cI\u2019ve got to say I\u2019m working my ass off here!\u201d he boomed in Lansing, Michigan, eliciting a huge cheer.
\nTrump also said his pandemic policies and economic chops would serve the nation better than Biden.
\n\u201cThis election is a choice between a Trump super-recovery or Biden depression,\u201d he said.
\nBut with Covid-19 cases rising in several states and no agreement yet on a pandemic rescue package in Congress, US stocks mostly slid Tuesday for a third straight session.
\nLater in Wisconsin, Trump warned Americans that they should not \u201clet this radical socialist group take over\u201d with Biden as president.
\n\u201cWe didn\u2019t come this far and fight this hard to surrender our country back to the corrupt Washington swamp,\u201d he said at his final rally of the day in Omaha, Nebraska.
\nElection tracking website RealClearPolitics has Biden up 7.4 points in an average of national polls — a slight drop from just days ago.
\nTrump dismissed the polls in a tweet Tuesday and accused the media of focusing on \u201cCovid, Covid, Covid\u201d to hurt his reelection chances.
\nWith Biden maintaining a more constrained campaign schedule instead of hosting what he called Trump\u2019s \u201csuper-spreader\u201d events, he dispatched Obama to Florida, where the race is on a knife edge.
\n\u201cOne week until the most important election in our lifetimes,\u201d Obama told a crowd at a drive-in rally in Orlando.
\nHe delivered a searing indictment of Trump, accusing him of incompetence, repeated lies, embracing dictators and ignoring the pandemic.
\nBut he also offered a blunt assessment of how apathy in 2016 may have cost Democrats the election and he urged them to make a plan and vote early.
\n\u201cWe were complacent last time. Folks got a little lazy, folks took things for granted, and look what happened,\u201d Obama said.
\n\u201cNot this time,\u201d he said. \u201cLet\u2019s bring it home.\u201d
\nWith Trump in the Midwest, First Lady Melania Trump hit the hustings for the first time this year.
\n\u201cDonald is a fighter,\u201d she told Trump supporters in Pennsylvania, before turning to her husband\u2019s rabid Twitter use.
\n\u201cI do not always agree with the way he says things,\u201d she said, to some laughter. \u201cBut it is important to him that he speaks directly to the people he serves.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Online WARM SPRINGS Joe Biden flayed Donald Trump on Tuesday with accusations the US President has surrendered to a surging pandemic, as the Democrat took his campaign to the Republican stronghold of Georgia one week before the election. While the former vice president went on electoral offense, seeking to expand the campaign map and his […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":153076,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-153065","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-world"],"yoast_head":"\n