With three days to go before the 2024 U.S. Presidential election is held, both Donald Trump and Kamala Harris are vigorously campaigning across the country to persuade the undecided to vote in their favour.

According to most polls, this is a dead heat and too close to call. The polls got it totally wrong in 2016, vastly underestimating support for the real estate mogul Donald Trump in an election which the Democrat Hillary Clinton was expected to win.

Trump lost a closely contested election against Joe Biden in 2020. He continues to maintain that the election was stolen. He should refrain from belabouring that grievance. He now has an opportunity to right that perceived wrong and apply himself.  People do not gravitate toward a sore loser. Trump must put that behind him and move on.

At the last election, he secured some 75 million votes. This time he should be looking to better that and should have formulated a strategy to do so from the get-go. He has not.

The MAGA movement is formidable and that is already baked into the cake. Trump needs to add to that and should have actively courted a variety of different voting blocks.

Young disaffected white men without college degrees favour him, but he has not targeted them sufficiently, informing them how he will make their plight better.

Black men are giving Trump the nod and bemoaning that the Democrats take their support for granted. Many say Both Obama and Biden did little for them in return for their support. They respond to Trump’s alpha male persona in a world where men are chided for exhibiting what liberals call “toxic masculinity” and are punished for it. 

They see Trump as someone to emulate rather than Kamala Harris’ running mate Tim Walz and her husband Douglas Emhoff. Again, Trump has not sought to deliberately target them and bring them under his camp.

During the 2020 campaign, he famously beseeched them with, “What do you have to lose?”. He should make the case of what they will lose if they do not vote for him. He has to go after them and ensure they vote for him.

There are 48 million African Americans in a population of 350 million in the United States. Blacks make up 14 per cent of the population. Their impact is diminishing as the years go by as Asian-Americans and Hispanic-Americans continue to see their numbers rise. 

But at this time, Trump must make ground here, even from a cultural perspective. He must take a holistic view of the Democrat support and look to break it up.

Black and Hispanic men could make the difference in a closely contested contest where women will turn out in historic numbers.

Republicans tend to rely on the conservatives, the middle-of-the-road middle-class. Trump must debunk that and establish a broad-based coalition.

One of Trump’s strengths is people trust him to better manage the economy. Kamala Harris has closed the gap here largely because he has not played to his strength. He needs to continuously present his plans to spur growth and put more money in Americans’ pockets. How will he revive American manufacturing and create jobs?

He is focused too much on imposing tariffs, particularly on Chinese goods rather than becoming more competitive.

During his administration, the economy was in relatively good shape and he must remind the electorate of this fact.  He must spread the word that the American economy will be even better, and its people will prosper. That is a winning proposition. He must call on his business experience as a real-estate mogul.

He has yet to roll out business titans who support him. They should be his front-line surrogates not sycophants riding on his coattails looking to him to throw them a bone.

In 2016, he cited Carl Ichan as a business leader he admired and appointed him as a special adviser. Ichan has not been seen or utilised this time out. Elon Musk, America’s richest business personality has pledged his support and actively campaigns on his behalf, but Trump needs more successful business leaders who back his plans for the American economy.

Steve Mnuchin was loyal to Trump and did a good job as Treasury Secretary. He is yet to play a significant role in this campaign. Someone of his talent and proven ability should not be on the sidelines.

Trump has talked about cutting federal income tax. That needs to be further explained and sold to Americans. 

He must champion American productivity and make the case he would be better doing so than Kamala Harris.

The former President has to credit pollster and data analyst Kellyanne Conway for getting him over the line in 2016. In 2024, she has been a very good contributor to Fox News, but she would be far more effective in the field, seeing to it that Trump returns to the White House. Trump has plenty of talking heads in the media. He needs Conway’s expertise and to remember she was instrumental in securing a surprising victory for him against the odds.

He has chosen to keep faith with Susie Wiles and Brooke Rollins of America First Policy Institute but one can’t help think Conway would bring more heat to the game. She is a battlefield general and one he needed on his team.

Immigration will be a major electoral issue, and it is one felt keenly by many Americans. Trump believes that too many immigrants are allowed to pour through the borders and they are taking away resources from Americans.

Rather than talking about Haitians eating cats and dogs and immigrants “poisoning the blood of our country’, he has to make a more cogent argument. America is a country of immigrants; it is the foundation upon which it was built. The indigenous people of America are the native Indians and there are not too many of them around today.

America is a potpourri of different nationalities, races and cultures blended into the greatest nation on this earth. People come to America to build a better life. Trump must recognise that and focus on that. America wants good people who will contribute to the country not reprobates, criminals and outcasts.

But at the same time he must refrain from racist and fascist rhetoric. The insult to Puerto Ricans was a mistake which could come back to haunt him. He should have apologised for it, reprimanded the comedian publicly and instantly looked to build bridges with the Puerto Rican/Latino community.

It was a faux pas.

The immigration argument must be carefully framed, and he must point the finger at the Biden administration for allowing porous borders that puts a strain on local administrations, resources and the running of orderly cities. This issue should not be a divisive one that incites xenophobia and leads to violence against minorities.

The U.S. foreign-born population jumped to 47.8 million in 2023, an increase of 1.6 million from 2022, making it the largest annual increase in more than 20 years. 

Does the U.S. have the absorbative capacity to accommodate this? 

There are now more than 11 million  undocumented immigrants  93 per cent of the population) residing in the United States.

Donald Trump has said that he will put in place, “the largest domestic deportation in American history.”

As much as 60 per cent of Americans agree with this making it a national issue that Trump is winning on.

What must be paid attention to is how he delivers his agenda on this contentious issue. His tone should not be draconian or racist but rather convey that people come into the country the right way and meet the necessary stipulations. The country cannot be flooded with undocumented foreigners seeking to suckle on the teat of America.

Trump has taken a strong position on law and order and again this has paid off for him. Defund the police is nonsense and should be exposed as such. Rather give them resources and see to it that citizens support and honour the police. They are not the enemy. They help keep Americans safe and secure and see to it that they enjoy the freedoms the country is beginning to take for granted.

People should be law-abiding. Decency and civil behaviour should be upheld. Criminals and those who seek to wreak havoc and chaos should be dealt with. People should be allowed to live in peace and harmony. This should be a fundamental American right and not be made ambiguous by woke ideas and notions.

Trump is no longer an unknown political entity. He would do well to reduce the bombast and make valid cases. 

His peccadillos supposed sexual indiscretions and federal indictments have not diminished him as a political force, in fact, Americans have brushed those aside. He is seen as a maverick, an outlier that many rally to which makes him a contender not readily dismissed

That is a key strength. He does not symbolise politics as usual. People do crave change and someone who tells it as it is. Donald Trump embodies this, and it has proved a winning formula for him before.

Will it do so again? 

Rather than hurl insults at Kamala Harris and attempt to portray her as Communist, he would fare better painting her as being complicit in the Biden administration’s shortcomings. After all, she was the Vice-President. He must force her to dissociate herself from the President and let it be seen that she has thrown him under the bus.

She is not a gifted political athlete and he should exploit that but refrain from the personal invective and depicting her as some kind of vicious shrew- no one is really buying that.

J.D. Vance has proven to be far more effective than Mike Pence and Trump should deploy him more. He put a beating on Tim Walz during the Vice-Presidential debate and has been credible on the campaign stump. He has turned out to be an asset.

Trump can win this Presidential election, it’s his to lose. Can he get more people on his side than he did in 2020? We will have a clearer answer next week.