Kamala Harris vs Donald Trump race reaches climax in US election campaign marked by fear, vitriol

By ABC's North America correspondent Barbara Miller, in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania

Analysis: With election day upon us, it's worth remembering what that means for Americans.

A friend told me she couldn't understand why people were scheduling meetings in her diary on election day.

Didn't they understand how anxious she'd be?

If the election is as close as predicted, half of this country's population will be left deeply disappointed after an ugly campaign filled with drama and violence during which they were told the stakes couldn't be higher.

And as the polls open, it's a race as close as it's ever been.

Americans will decide between two candidates who in many ways really couldn't be more different, and yet who both have pulled off remarkable comebacks in the run-up to this day.

Four years ago, many of his critics thought they'd seen the last of Republican nominee Donald Trump when he reluctantly left the White House in 2020, defeated and twice impeached.

Perhaps they should have marked his words to supporters before he boarded Air Force One for a final time to head to Florida.

"Goodbye. We love you. We will be back in some form," he said.

And here he is.

Four criminal indictments, one guilty verdict, and a finding of liability for sexual abuse and fraud haven't stopped him from solidifying his grip on the party and his base.

A second comeback

A couple of years ago not many observers would have bet money on Trump's opponent sitting where she is either.

Democratic nominee Kamala Harris proved on the whole to be an unpopular vice president. She made blunders while saddled with the unenviable task of addressing the root causes of undocumented immigration. Stories leaked of dysfunction in her office.

President Joe Biden seemed to change his mind on handing over to his deputy and being, as he had promised, a transitional president.

Then came the debate, when the 81-year-old president mangled his words, lost his train of thought and stared slack-jawed at Trump.

It was excruciating.

It's easy to say in retrospect that it was only a matter of time before Biden was convinced his candidacy was no longer viable, but for a while he dug in hard, insisting he was a fighter who'd always been underestimated.

As Trump, with his bandaged ear, was feted at the GOP convention as a kind of deity, Biden came down with Covid-19 and had to pull out of campaign events and head back to Delaware.

That was the moment it truly seemed all over.

By waiting so long to step aside, Biden arguably gave Harris her best shot at becoming his successor.

How 'weird' came and went

In a star-studded convention in August, the Democrats had found a new lease of life and energy.

Victory against Trump suddenly felt like a real possibility.

"Thank you for bringing back the joy," Tim Walz said of his new boss.

Walz, the governor of Minnesota, had been plucked from relative obscurity to become Harris's VP pick, in large part it seemed because his way of describing the Republicans as "weird" caught on.

The joy is in shorter supply now.

Harris and Walz are no longer leaning into the "weird" descriptor, instead painting the other side in much darker tones.

As the campaign has progressed, Democrats have increasingly returned to the message Biden had been trying to hammer home: that Trump represents a threat to democracy and freedom.

In a speech billed as her closing argument and delivered from the Ellipse, from where Donald Trump fired up the mob who stormed the Capitol on 6 January, 2021, Harris told the crowd that this election was "more than just a choice between two parties and two different candidates".

"It is a choice about whether we have a country rooted in freedom for every American or ruled by chaos and division."

Harris's arguably strongest campaign issue is the promise to restore the right to abortion and reproductive healthcare, eroded in large parts of the country since the overturning of Roe v Wade.

Unlike the woman who went before her, Hillary Clinton, Harris has not made her gender a feature of this campaign.

The vice president has also largely avoided questions about her racial identity.

She refused to be drawn when Trump suggested she had "happened to turn black".

"Same old tired playbook, next question please," the vice president told CNN.

Yet, for many of the supporters I have met, Harris's race and gender do matter.

"To see someone with similar skin like me and a woman to have the possibility ... to be the president of the United States of America, I'm honoured," a woman told me a couple of weeks ago at a Harris rally in Georgia.

"It's bringing me to tears."

An angry Trump barrels towards the finish line

Trump's campaign has changed over time too.

His rally ramblings appear to have gotten darker and uglier. If he's trying to appeal to women, he appears to be going about it in an unlikely way.

The man who prides himself on stacking the Supreme Court that ended the constitutional right to abortion has described himself as "the father of IVF".

It's a particularly perplexing claim given that the overturning of Roe v Wade opened the door to moves to restrict access to IVF.

Trump says he's going to "protect women", "whether the women like it or not".

And he's suggested that a prominent female critic, Republican Liz Cheney, wouldn't be such a "war hawk" if she had guns trained on her.

Perhaps this is Trump's way of appealing to the "bro vote", to young men he thinks will find this language appealing or funny, but there's been a sense in the final days of this campaign that Trump is getting tired and angry.

There was the bizarre dancing incident when he swayed to his favourite tunes on a rally stage for a full 40 minutes.

Then he got really, really angry about a poorly functioning microphone, bashing it, seeming to make sexual gestures with it, and telling the crowd he was "seething".

"Do you want to see me knock the hell out of people backstage?" he asked at the rally in Milwaukee.

Trump's strongest issues are the economy and the border.

The Biden administration was seen as doing too little too late to curb illegal migration at the southern border.

The Trump campaign has highlighted the stories of young women and girls allegedly murdered by undocumented immigrants.

There is no evidence undocumented migrants are committing those crimes at higher rates than Americans, but many Trump voters say concerns about the border are front of mind.

If Trump wins, it will also be in large part down to cost-of-living pressures.

Inflation may be under control again, but prices are high.

Many people are doing it tough, and they tell you life seemed more affordable under Trump.

A nervous wait for the morning after

If Harris doesn't win, the bloodletting will be swift.

Those who thought Pennsylvania's Governor Josh Shapiro should have been her VP pick will feel vindicated, especially if she falls short in the key swing state, which appears to be hanging on a knife-edge.

Shapiro may position himself for a run in 2028, so too Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer, California Governor Gavin Newsom and perhaps Wes Moore of Maryland.

In four years, the Democrats could get the open primary they were denied by Biden's insistence he was fit for another four years.

There are genuine fears about the prospect of more political violence.

If Trump loses, it is probable he will contest the results.

There are growing signs the seeds for such moves are being sown.

If, on the other hand, Trump wins, many Harris supporters will worry about what that will mean for their freedoms and liberties, and not just in regards to reproductive rights.

The former president has repeatedly pledged to carry out mass deportations of undocumented immigrants and unleash the army on what he calls "the enemy within".

Whatever the outcome, Americans are strapping themselves in for a bumpy ride.

- ABC