Uncertainty dominates presidential campaign's final stretch

NEW YORK (AP) — Within President Donald Trump’s campaign, some privately feared the worst heading into the national conventions.

They worried a strong showing by Democrat Joe Biden, combined with an underwhelming performance by Trump, would lock in the certainty of a blowout loss that would essentially end the election by September.

But as the candidates move beyond trouble-free conventions and into the final phase of the 2020 election season, both sides acknowledge the contest is tightening. 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.

Each side cast the other as an existential threat to America’s future as they offered voters starkly different versions of reality over the last two weeks of carefully scripted conventions.

Democrats attacked Trump as an incompetent racist with autocratic tendencies who is failing to protect the nation from the pandemic as he actively undermines democracy. Republicans largely ignored the pandemic while attacking Joe Biden as a senile lifetime politician controlled by his party’s far-left wing and incapable of protecting suburban voters from mobs of protesters.

“America doesn’t feel...