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The news that CNN and the AP have proclaimed Joe Biden president-elect is barely a minute old when Beatrice Lesser dances in a circle on the steps of her Brooklyn home, slapping a saucepan with the lid. She laughs, screams. “We did it!” He yells. “I’m so relieved that I can’t describe it.”
Ken and Beatrice Lesser celebrate Joe Biden’s victory in Brooklyn.
(Photo: Thorsten Denkler / SZ)
Cars pass, a single honk of the horn. Even line 65 bus drivers honk their horns. If you do this all day, your arm will hurt after the shift.
People come from many houses here on Dean Street, black, white, Latino, Asian. The street, the whole neighborhood is in turmoil. They laugh, make noise, dance, many have tears in their eyes. Some black men raise their right fists silently. Others just walk the sidewalks, grinning widely, enjoying the moment, their moment. They also elected Trump from the White House.
There in Washington, in the “Black Lives Matter Plaza,” a slice of 16th Street across from the White House, which was renamed in the summer, people stand, music is played, and there are lively dances. Many people have posters with messages for Donald Trump: “You are fired” or “Eviction”, translated: “You are fired” and “Eviction.”
The atmosphere is calm in the afternoon. The White House itself is sealed off by several steel fences. Many stores had also protected their windows with wood panels for fear of disturbances.
Across the country, people celebrate “their” victory over Trump, regardless of whether or not he tweeted that he would not recognize the election, that he saw himself as a winner. In New York, Washington, Los Angeles, Portland, Detroit, Austin, Atlanta, Phoenix, everywhere people come together for what they consider to be the best electoral party in eight years. And there is more every minute. They wave their Biden / Harris signs, waves of cheers go through the crowd again and again.
This continues even hours after the news of Biden’s victory. And it will probably last well into the night. A burst of joy after days of stress. For many even: after four years of stress. Meanwhile, Trump has played golf.
“Thank you Pennsylvaniaaaaaa! Yeahhhhh!” Yells one of Beatrice Lesser’s neighbors across the street. And the joy increases again. In the neighboring western state of New York, Trump won four years ago. A shock to the Democrats. Pennsylvania was part of the democratic protection wall that collapsed at that time.
After hard days of counting, Biden’s victory was now decided there on Saturday. Biden had fewer than 35,000 clear votes at the time CNN declared him the Pennsylvania winner. On election night, Trump still had an advantage of several hundred thousand votes there. Thanks to tons of absentee votes, Biden is now unreachable ahead. It is almost certain that even a count would not produce a different result.
With Pennsylvania, Biden has passed the 270-vote mark in the Electoral College, the minimum he needed to be elected to office there. And if the dates are correct, this could be the great victory you need to put all doubts aside.
Because if Biden wins all the states he currently leads in, he’ll unite 306 votes on the election committee. As many as Trump in 2016. A success that Trump called a landslide victory at the time.
Biden has already garnered more than 74 million votes. This is already the biggest victory in American history: he leads with more than four million votes. The great states of California and New York are far from being counted. There are still millions of votes waiting for Biden to win.
Ken leaves the house, Beatrice’s husband. They are both approaching 70. In fact, he wanted to go to Michigan on Election Day as a poll worker. You left it. Because of the pandemic. Ken was in the shower when the news of Biden’s victory came through, his hair is still damp. First he hung his American flag by the upstairs window. “I still can’t believe it,” he says. “Trump in the White House,” he says, “that was a daily insult to us.” These days of insults, apparently, are numbered.
