Colliding crises shake already chaotic campaign's last month

Sign up for the daily Inside Washington email for exclusive US coverage and analysis sent to your inbox Get our free Inside Washington email Get our free Inside Washington email SIGN UP I would like to be emailed about offers, events and updates from The Independent. Read our privacy policy The closing days of the presidential campaign were already dominated by the worst public health crisis in a century, millions of jobless Americans, a reckoning on civil rights the death of a Supreme Court justice and uncertainty about President Donald Trump s willingness to accept the election outcome. “It’s good news for Joe Biden, because he’s established a lead that Trump has to somehow break, and as you get closer to the election it’s harder to change peoples' minds," Luntz said. Not since perhaps Abraham Lincoln's election in 1860 has there been such doubt about the peaceful transfer of power in the United States, said Republican strategist Steve Schmidt Schmidt, co-founder of the anti-Trump Lincoln Project, is no stranger to final-weeks political drama, having led John McCain’s presidential campaign in 2008. As Democrats work to make voting easier during the pandemic, Trump's team and its GOP allies have used a combination of threatening letters, lawsuits, viral videos and presidential misinformation to fight election procedures on a county-by-county basis.