Hillary Clinton starts her final sprint to Election Day
PHILADELPHIA -- With early voting coming to a close in states like Florida, Ohio and North Carolina, Hillary Clinton’s campaign is shifting its focus to game day.
“Here in Pennsylvania, you vote on Tuesday,” Clinton said on Saturday night in Philadelphia, speaking to ten thousand people gathered at an open-air amphitheater to see Katy Perry perform in support of the Democratic nominee. “More than 37 and a half million people in our country have already voted. Why are they out there voting? Because I believe they are standing up for a hopeful, inclusive vision of America.”
And, Clinton said, on November 8, “it’s your turn.”
Pennsylvania is one of at least five states where Clinton will campaign in the final stretch before Election Day. On Sunday, she’ll be here and in Ohio and New Hampshire. On Monday, she’ll travel to Michigan, back to Pennsylvania and then on to North Carolina for a final, midnight rally. Earlier Saturday in Pembroke Pines, in Florida’s Broward County, Clinton made her final in-person pitch to voters in the Sunshine State.
A sudden and torrential downpour forced Clinton to cut her usual stump speech short. She spoke for fewer than ten minutes.
“You are a hearty bunch standing out here in the rain,” Clinton said, as her supporters huddled under umbrellas or took cover nearby. “Here’s what I want you to remember: I want to be the president for everybody, everybody who agrees with me, people who don’t agree with me, people who vote for me, people who don’t vote for me.”
A few hours -- and an outfit change -- later, Clinton’s campaign plane touched down in Philadelphia. Clinton is set to campaign here every day until Election Day.
“We have tried to calibrate our schedule to be in states at the peak time for voting,” Robby Mook, Clinton’s campaign manager, told reporters during the flight. “[Donald] Trump’s is — it looks like he’s just trying to go everywhere all at once.”
, Clinton will travel to Grand Rapids for a “get out the vote” rally, while President Barack Obama, who has by now campaigned extensively on Clinton’s behalf, will headline an event for her in Ann Arbor that same day. Former President Bill Clinton will campaign in Lansing on Sunday.
Mook said that while the race in Michigan has “tightened,” he insisted that Clinton is still on track for a victory there.
“I think we’re going to win in Michigan,” he said. “We just wanted to make sure we were doing everything we can to turn people out there.”
He also stressed that Clinton has more paths to 270 electoral votes than her opponent, suggesting that if Clinton were to lose Michigan, a state with more electoral votes up for grabs, like Florida, could make up for those lost.
“North Carolina, plus one of the smaller battleground states, is the same number as Michigan,” Mook explained. “Donald Trump has to win all of these battleground races, and one of the reasons we’re so happy with the turnout numbers we’re seeing...is we are slowly building up a lead that’s going to be harder and harder for Donald Trump to overcome and that’s why we are fighting on all these fronts.”
Aides close to Clinton often talk about how superstitious she is and the candidate herself -- who regularly reminds her supporters that she isn’t taking them “for granted” -- has told voters that anything can happen before Tuesday. According to Jennifer Palmieri, Clinton’s communications director, Clinton has not yet started to work on her speech for Election Night.
“It’s only a few days, but it’s a long way to go before we get there,” Palmieri said. “Our hope is...that the election itself is an act of the country coming together to make a decision about the kind of country that we’re going to be. We have certainly seen people in the last few weeks not just stand up to choose to be for her, but it feels as if they are empowered to make America in their own image.”