LORD ASHCROFT's tour of US reveals where election will be won and lost

Four days to go in America and we're down to the closing arguments. 's message is 'Kamala broke it; I'll fix it'. But true to form, that's been obscured by the huge row over a joke about Puerto Rico – risque or disgraceful, depending on how you see things – made by a comedian at his weekend rally at Madison Square Garden.

It's debatable how many still on the Trump train will be compelled to jump off by the latest in a long line of such incidents. But with things as tight as they are, any distraction is unwelcome. This will also be in Kamala HQ after President Biden responded to the rally by calling Trump supporters 'garbage'. The insists he was talking about the comedian, not the voters, but the words are out there.

This in turn overshadows Harris's own final pitch, made on the spot where the former president spoke before the storming of the on , 2021: don't return to the chaos of Trump. Her negative final focus is a stark reversal of the vibes of hope and 'joy' of her early campaign. (In fact, there's been a sometimes contradictory mixture of the two approaches. On Sunday she told a church in Philadelphia she was 'determined to turn the page on hatred and division' – a few days after using a interview to label her opponent 'a fascist').