Uncertainty dominates presidential campaign's final stretch

And after months of running an almost entirely virtual campaign because of the pandemic, Biden has decided to launch a new phase of in-person events to help blunt any Trump gains.“This campaign has always known that it’s going to be a close race, it’s going to be a tough race,” Biden’s senior adviser Anita Dunn said, noting that no Democratic presidential candidate since 1964 has earned more than 52.9% of the vote.She added: “It’s a polarized nation and we expect this kind of tightening.”That leaves Democrats and Republicans preparing for a 64-day sprint to the finish that is widely expected to be one of the most turbulent and chaotic periods in modern American history. Continued police violence against unarmed Black people has sparked sweeping civil rights protests and new incidents of protest-related violence on the streets.There are the natural disasters: A hurricane pummeled the Gulf Coast last week, massive forest fires are burning California, and powerful derecho winds slammed Iowa’s farming industry.And what worries government watchdogs the most: Trump is openly undermining the integrity of the election by raising unfounded concerns about voting by mail to avoid long waits at polling places during the pandemic.Amid the chaos, Miles Taylor, a lifetime Republican who previously served as chief of staff inside the Trump administration’s Department of Homeland Security, warned there is nothing that the Republican president will not do or say to defeat Biden.“Put nothing past Donald Trump,” Taylor told The Associated Press. He’s grown fond of rallies inside airport hangars, which are arguably safer from a health perspective given they are partially open-air; they also allow the president to energize his crowds by pulling up in Air Force One.The president will continue to highlight the civil unrest in response to police brutality in Wisconsin and elsewhere, according to Trump campaign manager Bill Stepien, who described the Republican message against their Democratic challenger this way: “We’ll match the president’s leadership and record against Joe Biden, who is a weak puppet of the extreme left, afraid to stand up to anti-police rioters, and bowing to radicals to raise taxes and drag the country toward socialism.”Trump aides privately crowed about Biden’s decision to resume campaigning, believing it demonstrates concern about a tightening race that could lead to public stumbles from the gaff-prone former vice president.They also pointed to Biden’s plans to campaign in Minnesota, describing it as evidence of a narrowing race even in a state Trump lost four years ago.