The polls suggest a close race perhaps getting closer by the hour. As part of that last minute race both candidates are making whirlwind tours of both battleground states and several ones thought originally to be safe blue states. One in particular is Trump’s Sunday afternoon visit to Minnesota a state that has voted Democratic in every presidential election since 1972, a state which produced Democratic and Farmer labour senatorial stars like Eugene McCarthy, Hubert Humphrey, Paul Wellstone, Walter Mondale and recently Al Franken.But over its history it has also elected many times Republican governors and also very importantly populist candidates from the Farmer Labour coalition that made Minnesota one of the leading American centres of populism in the United States. I grew up in Winnipeg and so I know something from some visits to Minnesota about progressive traditions in Minneapolis and Minnesota in general. In many ways Winnipeg and Minneapolis were the two metropolitan centres of the great prairie region of North America that stretches from Eastern Alberta through Saskatchewan to the eastern edges of Winnipeg and south through Minnesota the Dakotas to Wisconsin all places where progressive populism has had a constituency. So given how Donald Trump has attempted to rally populism to his side it makes sense that he would take time to visit Minnesota because although the Democrats may have the upper hand his populist appeal might well allow him to rally Minnesotans to his cause.

On the Democratic party side party leaders and partisans will be pleased that the latest letter from FBI head James Comey clears Hillary Clinton stating that the recent batch of e mails do not change his original July assessment that Secretary Clinton’s case did not warrant any prosecution.