Two of a kind: Donald Trump and Grover Cleveland

TOI Correspondent from Washington: Whether American voters believe his story and promises or her story and pledges, the United States will make history in 2024.

If Trump wins, he will become only the second President to return to the White House for a second term after a gap term of four years. The last and only President to achieve that feat was Grover Cleveland, who served two nonconsecutive terms, from 1885 to 1889 and from 1893 to 1897.

If Kamala wins, it will make even bigger history: She will become the first female President of the United States in 248 years that has seen 46 male Presidents, 45 of them all-white. And even more strikingly, a woman of black and Indian heritage with no familial political connections, and who remained single till she was 50.

Neither will happen without a fight that could turn scrappy and ugly.

The first signs that this could be a fraught election with disagreements and disputes that could eventually end up in courts came very early on when Trump supporters raged about a breakdown of voting machines in Cambria county in Pennsylvania even as voting began on Tuesday morning.

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Although county officials advised voters to cast paper ballots into a locked box that would be scanned later when the machines were working or to be counted by hand, and also obtained a court order allowing them to extend voting hours to compensate for the downtime, conspiracy theorists were in full swing – even though Cambria is a deep red county.

Political analysts expect plenty of such sand and monkey wrenches to be thrown into the voting and counting process, particularly if Trump is seen to be losing.

Typically Trump, and broadly Republicans, jump into early leads when tallies of votes from less-populated rural, white-dominated counties come in first; Democrats catch up when tallies from the larger, more-populous urban and suburban counties come in. It is widely expected that Trump will claim victory when he is leading, and allege “voter fraud” as the lead diminishes.

The Trump momentum on the campaign trail certainly appears to have diminished in the final hours, notwithstanding a MAGA groundswell that is expected to see his base storm polling stations on Tuesday to “swamp the vote” as he put it.

The MAGA Supremo wound up his campaign with four rallies in battleground states on Monday, concluding with one in Michigan that ran past 2 a.m Tuesday, looking haggard and tired. Political analysts who have tracked him for a long time said he sounded desperate and dispirited, and it looked like he was limping to the finish line rather than exuding a strong finishing kick.

Pablo O’Hana, a political advisor to British leaders who was at one rally, had harsh words to describe the Trump finale, writing, "the curtains are closing on this tired, unoriginal, boring circus, a dwindling sideshow losing its once hypnotic power... a tired ringmaster trying to hold together a fraying show... a mishmash of words, an incoherent jumble that became more desperate as the crowd dissipated....a tedious, drawn-out circus that promised the thrill of a high-wire act but delivered the dullness of a retired clown stumbling through a routine."

Harris, on her part, ended her campaign rather more energetically outside the Philadelphia Art Museum -- where Sylvester Stallone raced up the steps to train for his boxing bout in the iconic scene in the movie Rocky -- declaring, "the momentum is on our side." In a spectacular setting in a city that laid the foundations of American democracy, she made her standard 20-minute speech, compared to Trump’s two-hour exertions, after Oprah Winfrey and Lady Gaga had rolled out endorsements.

The United States has seen nothing like this -- either in terms of presidential candidates or the campaigns in the age of social media, artificial intelligence tools, memes, and misinformation, virtually a post-truth era. There have been fierce campaigns before, but nothing that plumbed the depths of coarseness and vulgarity like this one.

Trump repeatedly painted a dark and dystopian view of America unless he took over, calling it an "occupied country" in his final rally. Harris projected an upbeat and positive vision, pledging unity and progress in the face of doubts about her ability. American voters will have their say by the end of the day.

Also See:

US Presidential Election | Trump Vs Kamala Harris | Swing States | Donald Trump | US Election Results 2024