USA election: Donald Trump echoes Hollywood’s Independence Day at final campaign stop

A smiling Clinton, dressed in red, was chatting on the phone to her two-year-old granddaughter as she set off from Westchester airport, near her home in NY state, on the 2,000-mile sprint that will wrap up in the wee hours of Election Day.

“Our core values are being tested in this election, but my faith in our future has never been stronger”, she said. “So the first thing we do, let’s get rid of Hillary”.

To those in Trump country, no boastful, stomach-turning video about women, no “lock-her-up” insult from the stage, no toxic tweet in the wee hours, could peel them away from the man whose crudities only made him more authentic in their eyes.

Clinton, inheritor of Obama’s vaunted campaign apparatus and a skillful (and well-financed) organizer in her own right, fielded an impressive professional and volunteer operation.

Clinton brought up her different plans to appeal to the crowd including equal pay, jobs and raising the national minimum wage.

The spotlight Tuesday is on the presidential race between Democrat Hillary Clinton and Republican Donald Trump.

“If they thought MI was in the bag, Hillary Clinton, Bill Clinton and Barack Obama would not be returning there”, she said. Wayne, Oakland and Macomb counties accounted for 45 percent of the statewide Democratic presidential vote in 2012 and 33 percent of the Republican vote. The only event now on Trump’s schedule after this Grand Rapids speech is the election night party Trump will be holding in New York City.

MI has not gone to a Republican candidate for president since the 1988 election.

“We’re just going to work until the last vote is counted”.

This has not stopped Trump from continuing to use the issue as ammunition against her.

The Reuters/Ipsos States of the Nation project gave Clinton a 90 percent chance of defeating Trump, seeing her on track to win 303 Electoral College votes out of the 270 needed, to Trump’s 235.

Trump swore an end to Syrian refugees being let into the USA and laid the groundwork for “a lot” more visits to the Mitten state as he works to bring jobs and factories back to the state.

Americans are choosing a new president Tuesday, but not just that.

Michigan Gov. Rick Snyder says he’s encouraged by what appears to be high voter turnout at his polling place on Election Day.

And it’s clear that Trump’s campaign considering MI in play. Gone, even, were the frenzied, angry, overflow crowds – that unlikeliest of electoral nourishment that has sustained Donald Trump for almost 17 months.

MI is a state that has certain casual demographic and regional markers that make it easy for outsiders to assume it is fertile ground for Trump: Midwest, white working class, Rust Belt. Twenty-six percent of Trump absentee supporters said it made them more likely to vote for the businessman from NY, 22% of non=absentee voters say it will “more likely” make them cast their ballot for Trump.

Ivanka will be campaigning in West Michigan Monday. But I can’t say there was really anything Hillary’s shown me that made me feel like voting for her.

Trump said American jobs are “being stolen like candy from a baby”.