Trump, Clinton in mad scramble in campaign’s closing days

Hillary Clinton entered the final full day of campaigning on an upswing Monday after FBI Director James Corey said the agency’s view of how she handled classified information hadn’t changed.

It was another dramatic twist in the race for the White House — few believed Comey’s investigation would be completed before Election Day — and the news offered reassurances to Democrats who have been alarmed by polls showing Donald Trump closing the gap.

{mosads}In the final hours before Election Day, the race for the White House played out in states that weren’t on anyone’s radar only a week ago, adding to the uncertainty in what has been a volatile campaign.

Michigan — which hasn’t gone for the GOP nominee since 1988 and received little attention from either campaign until recently — has suddenly become the center of the political universe.

Trump swung through the Detroit suburbs there on Sunday, greeted by op-eds from local newspapers declaring the state to be in play for the Republican.

“The momentum — here and across the nation — is Trump’s,” said the Detroit Free Press.

The latest Free Press survey of the state found Clinton’s lead there reduced over the past two weeks from 11 points to 4 — within the poll’s margin of error.

Trump touted recent polling there at his Sterling Hills, Mich., rally Sunday night and said of Clinton: “I told her via television, stop, you’re wasting your time. The people are too smart.”

A victory for Trump in Michigan would open a world of new paths to the White House for him, and the Clinton campaign is taking his incursion there seriously.

The Democratic nominee and President Obama will both stop in the Great Lakes State on Monday as they seek to blunt Trump’s momentum in the industrial Midwest, where the GOP nominee’s nationalist populism and anti-trade rhetoric has resonated with the white working-class voters who have abandoned Democrats.

Liberals on Sunday expressed concern that Clinton is spending the final days of the campaign on defense in a traditionally blue state.

“Beds are damp,” former Obama adviser Van Jones said on CNN’s “State of the Union.” “There is a crack in the blue wall and it has to do with trade.”

And Michigan isn’t the only blue state where Trump worked a surprising late push.

The GOP nominee also touched down in deep blue Minnesota, marking the first campaign rally for either candidate in the state this year. Polling is scarce in Minnesota, but Clinton holds a 5 point lead in the RealClearPolitics average.

“Do you really want a president who doesn’t care enough about your vote that she doesn’t show up?” Trump asked on Sunday. “She never came here.”

Trump’s running mate, Mike Pence, will visit Minnesota on Monday.

The North Star State last went for the Republican presidential nominee in 1972, when President Richard Nixon carried 49 states.

Election experts were baffled that Trump would spend valuable final hours there, one of five Sunday events, and the trip added to the confusion in a race that has confounded pundits at every turn.

Indeed, Trump spent all of Sunday in states that have not gone red in several presidential election cycles — Virginia, Pennsylvania, and Iowa among them.

Virginia is likely in Clinton’s column, but the polls have tightened in Pennsylvania, which along with Michigan, represents Trump’s best hope at picking up a blue Rust Belt state.

His trip to Iowa — another traditionally blue battleground that Trump must win — was to shore up his leaky support there. Trump once led handily, but polls now count the Hawkeye State as a toss-up

But even as Clinton played defense into the finale, Democrats expressed confidence that their get-out-the-vote operation and a favorable battleground map would deliver them a victory on Election Day.

While election forecasters have adjusted their models to reflect a closer race — Clinton has only a 65 percent chance to win in Nate Silver’s latest model, down from 88 percent in late October — the Democrat is still favored to win in most forecasts.

“She’s got it,” one close friend of Clinton told The Hill, predicting that the former secretary of State would win between 310 and 320 Electoral College votes. The number required to win the presidency is 270.

That confidence is inspired by early vote returns that show a massive spike in Hispanic turnout.

In Florida, where nearly 6 million people had voted as of Sunday, with ballots evenly split between the two parties, more Hispanics have already voted than did in all of 2012. 

In Nevada, some experts believe Hispanic turnout has already clinched the state for Clinton, even though she’s the underdog in the RealClearPolitics average of polls.

And while there’s been a decline in black voters casting ballots early in North Carolina, Clinton campaign manager Robby Mook has said that Hispanic turnout has more than made up for that deficit — and said the state may already be out of reach for Trump.

The GOP nominee must win the Tarheel State if he’s going to win the White House.

Democrats are additionally emboldened by the coordinated get-out-the-vote effort of the Clinton campaign, punctuated by Democratic heavyweights and pop culture icons holding massive rallies and concerts that look like a huge advantage heading into Tuesday.

President Obama, whose soaring popularity and ease on the stump makes him perhaps the campaign’s most effective surrogate, hit Florida on Sunday and will be in Michigan and New Hampshire on Monday. 

Obama has sought to diminish Trump with mockery at his campaign appearances.

“Apparently his campaign has taken away his Twitter,” Obama said Sunday at a rally in Florida.

“In the last two days, they had so little confidence in his self control, they said: ‘We’re just going to take away your Twitter,’” Obama said. “Now, if somebody cant handle a Twitter account, they can’t handle the nuclear code.” 

Meanwhile, Cleveland’s favorite son, LeBron James, is targeting black voters in Ohio at rallies across the state. Polls show a razor tight race in the Buckeye State, and Trump cannot win the White House without a victory there.

Clinton appeared in Cleveland for a star-studded concert headlined by Jay Z and Beyoncé over the weekend, and again on Sunday with James. 

The aim of those events is to corral thousands of fans and send them straight to the polls, but Republican National Committee Chairman Reince Priebus said the location of those events belied a whiff of desperation.

“When they’re concentrating on Cleveland two days before Tuesday, they’re not expanding the map in Ohio, I can assure you,” Priebus said on ABC’s “This Week.”

On Monday, Clinton, Obama, first lady Michelle Obama, former President Bill Clinton and daughter Chelsea Clinton will appear together for a get-out-the-vote concert in Pennsylvania, where Jon Bon Jovi and Bruce Springsteen will perform.

Republicans can’t compete with that level of star power — though rocker Ted Nugent entertained the crowd at Trump’s Michigan rally Sunday while the nominee was delayed — and instead will rely on Trump’s relentless campaign schedule and the enthusiasm of the supporters who show up at his massive rallies.

“He’ll be doing twice the stops that Clinton will be doing in the last few days,” Sen. Jeff Sessions (R-Ala.) boasted on “Fox News Sunday.”

After five rallies in five states on Sunday, Trump will make stops on Monday in Florida, North Carolina, Pennsylvania, Michigan and New Hampshire.

All of those states except North Carolina went for President Obama in 2012. 

Trump needs to win three to have a realistic shot, underscoring his narrow path to the White House

“He has to win all the battleground states and flip an otherwise deep blue state, other than Iowa, to win,” GOP strategist Nicole Wallace said on NBC’s “Meet the Press.”

“It’s a huge feat to win all those,” she continued. “But he’s concentrating his time in the kind of state it would take to win.”