[ad_1]
By The Washington Post 
4h ago
By Annie Linskey
Wilmington, Delaware – On Election Night 4, outside the Chase Center here, a meeting place emerged from a state of suspended animation.
Cranes raised huge lights to the sky. The forklifts moved concrete barriers. Workers ripped the protective plastic off the scaffolding. Balloons were tied to a metal fence, marking a perimeter.
It was Friday night and the Joe Biden campaign was gearing up for a socially estranged celebration party.
Again.
But it was all in vain.
Rather than declare victory on a towering, brightly lit stage, shortly before 11 p.m., Biden stood behind a simple lectern in a smaller space set up in a Chase Center atrium to urge patience.
“American fellow Americans, we don’t have a final declaration of victory yet,” Biden said, with his running mate, Sen. Kamala Harris, D-Calif., Nearby. “But the numbers tell us it’s clear, tell us a clear and compelling story. We are going to win this race.”
Biden said he would work for all Americans, regardless of party. “We can be opponents, but not enemies. We are Americans,” he said, with his senior staff watching from the back of the room. “I will work as hard for those who voted against me as I will work for those who voted for me.”
For Biden’s staff, after 18 months of campaigning, being turned down by party donors, holding to fourth place in Iowa, then sinking to fifth in New Hampshire, and then finally getting the nomination and hearing Democrats complain of how they were running an overly spoiled campaign for months, they believed they had proven the critics wrong.
Now all they needed was a network or two to call the race and declare Biden president-elect. They needed a bigger lead in Pennsylvania or bigger margins in Georgia or a few more votes in Arizona and a call in Nevada.
As members of Biden’s team allowed themselves to absorb the news that they had almost won, the landscape around them was changing. The next president could be among them. The Federal Aviation Administration published temporary flight restrictions over Wilmington airspace from 2 p.m. Friday through the following Wednesday.
The Secret Service sent reinforcements to Delaware to provide security for a team that would soon lead the country. Officers already in Wilmington extended their occupancy of the coveted rooms in the Westin adjacent to the Chase Center, where Biden’s team set up headquarters on election night.
Now they just needed a few more votes to make it official.
Local supporters began arriving on Wilmington’s waterfront in the early afternoon, taking advantage of the unusually warm 70-degree weather to catch a glimpse of history.
Ron Ozer, a professor of chemical engineering at Villanova University, organized a picnic with his wife just outside a black fence blocking a secure area. They had an iPad to listen to MSNBC. They had crackers. They had folding chairs. They were willing to wait.
They did not come Tuesday night and said that as the night progressed they were “disappointed” to see so much support for President Trump.
“We knew, logically, that there were a lot of ballots to count,” Ozer said. “But it wasn’t really understood.”
Justin Smith, 16, drove from New Jersey to Wilmington with his family to see Biden on Friday. “He has the positive attitude to make America whole again,” Smith said. “It’s not that great, because I feel like America can never be great again because of the [tension] and bad politics in the court system, “added Smith, who is African American.
Nathan Jenkins sold blue T-shirts and sweatshirts that read “I survived Covid-19” and “virus 45,” a reference to Trump. Jenkins said the prolonged aftermath of the election was “a bit stressful.”
“Sometimes you think it will be 2016 again,” he said. “But as things started to progress, I felt better. On election night I was a little nervous, to be honest.”
As the day progressed, Biden’s allies changed their tune on the potential of the holidays: With networks not announcing results, Biden’s campaign contemplated the possibility that he could wait one more day before sending Biden and his Running mate, Sen. Kamala Harris, D-Calif., to declare victory.
There were mixed signals about what the night would bring.
Around 4 p.m., some of Biden’s top employees were seen leaving the Chase Center, back to their hotel rooms. It was the wrong address for a celebration.
Then, around 5:20 p.m., a van used to transport the press that follows Biden’s every move stopped at the Westin. Was this a sign that Biden would be picked up at his nearby home soon?
As longtime Biden watchers chatted, many agreed that the late results appeared to be a fitting coda for a campaign operation that was itself chronically (and often inexplicably) late.
Election night had unofficially started around 3 p.m. Tuesday, when Biden’s aides recommended that reporters report to the Westin Hotel and settle in a second-floor conference room to await the results. Someone gave dozens of white roses to Biden’s staff, to honor the work they had done.
It was a skeletal crew, with only a few staff members, a small handful of reporters, and members of the production crew ready to watch Biden and Harris deliver a victory speech.
Instead, Biden and his wife emerged briefly, promising an update the next day.
In the brightly lit lobby of the Westin Hotel around 1 a.m. Wednesday, Biden’s strategist Mike Donilon waited for a pickup truck to take him elsewhere. He defended himself against journalists eager for a fragment.
About eight hours later, in the same lobby, chief strategist Anita Dunn spoke briefly with reporters after taking her daily coronavirus test. He had only slept an hour. “You guys can’t be that close to me,” he told reporters while explaining why the team was confident.
“We always said the goal was to get 270 electoral votes,” Dunn said. “We are very confident that once the votes have been counted, that is where we will be.”
Biden also came to the Chase Center on Wednesday, speaking briefly to reporters, with Harris by his side, to urge patience. “Power cannot be taken or affirmed,” Biden said. “It flows from the people.”
By Thursday, as the results continued to come in, resources on the bank of the Wilmington River were under stress. A Starbucks ran out of most cakes. A nearby restaurant at the Hotel Du Pont ran out of pumpkin soup. The hotel rooms disappeared. Biden and Harris received reports about the pandemic and the economy. The Secret Service agents began to personally meet the regulars who were entering and leaving the secure area.
Dunn and her husband, Bob Bauer, one of the campaign’s top election attorneys, were seen walking along the Christina River, a tributary of the Delaware River.
Friday began with a sense of new enthusiasm among Biden’s top campaign staff as they began gathering at the Westin mid-morning for their daily coronavirus tests. Overnight, the campaign had taken a slight edge in Georgia. And at 8:45 a.m., the counts also showed Biden ahead in his native Pennsylvania.
“When we took the lead in Pennsylvania, it felt more real than it is,” said an attendee who sipped iced coffee near a security checkpoint. “Twitter lit up. The signal lit up,” the aide said, referring to the secure text messaging platform used by many politicians.
The aide was coy about when exactly a Biden victory speech might happen, but many expected it to be Friday night.
The aide, who was not authorized to comment publicly and spoke on condition of anonymity, anticipated Biden’s message. “Joe Biden, since the day he announced his candidacy, he has been trying to unite the people and put an end to that kind of divisive toxic and chaotic mood in the country,” said the aide, adding that Biden ” I would like to go out and continue fulfilling my message. “
But when the sun set over Wilmington on Friday, the likelihood of a victory speech from Biden waned.
And as for those white roses that had arrived on Election Day, they had withered.
[ad_2]
