Vice President-elect Kamala Harris invoked the life and legacy of the late Representative John Lewis during her keynote address tonight, reminding Americans that “democracy is not guaranteed.” Democracy is “only as strong as our will to fight for it,” Harris said. “To protect it and never take it for granted,” he added from Wilmington, Delaware. “It takes sacrifice. But there is joy in it. And there is progress, because we, the people, have the power to build a better future.” Harris added: “And when our own democracy was on the ballot in this election with America’s soul at stake and the world watching, you ushered in a new day for America.” Harris’s speech comes less than 10 hours after CNN projected Biden’s victory in Pennsylvania, placing him above the 270 electoral vote threshold required for the presidency.
Joseph Robinette Biden Jr. has been elected the 46th president of the United States, promising to restore political normality and the spirit of national unity to face the economic and health crises, and make Donald J. Trump president one term after four years of tumult in the White House. Biden’s victory amounted to a repudiation of Trump by millions of voters exhausted by his divisive behavior and chaotic administration, and was achieved by an unlikely alliance of women, people of color, old and young voters, and a small fraction of Disgruntled Republicans. Trump is only the third president-elect since World War II to lose reelection, and the first in more than a quarter of a century. The result also provided a historic moment for Biden’s running mate, Senator Kamala Harris of California, who will become the first woman to serve as vice president.
With his triumph, Biden, who will turn 78 later this month, fulfilled his decades-long ambition in his third run for the White House, becoming the oldest elected president. A mainstay of Washington who was first elected amid the Watergate scandal, and who prefers political consensus to combat, Biden will lead a nation and a Democratic Party that have grown far more ideological since his arrival in the capital in 1973. The agenda, however, was less his political platform than his biography that many voters gravitated towards. Seeking the nation’s highest office half a century into his first campaign, Biden, a late-fall candidate in his career, presented his life of setback and recovery to voters as a parable for a wounded country. In a short statement, Biden called for healing and unity. “With the campaign over, it is time to put the anger and harsh rhetoric behind us and come together as a nation,” he said. “It is time for the United States to come together. And to heal. We are the United States of America. And there is nothing we cannot do, if we do it together. “
In his own statement, Trump insisted that “this election is far from over” and promised that his campaign would “begin to process our case in court,” but did not offer details.
The contest, which concluded after four tense days of counting votes on a handful of battlefields, was a singular referendum on Trump in a way that has not been the reelection of any president in modern times. He coveted attention, and voters who either adored or hated him were eager to pass judgment on his tenure. From the beginning to the end of the career, Biden made the character of the president a central element of his campaign.
This relentless approach propelled Biden to victory in historically Democratic strongholds in the industrial Midwest, with Biden forging a coalition of suburbanites and big-city residents to claim at least three states his party lost in 2016.
Yet even as Trump was removed from office, voters sent a more uncertain message about the center-left platform Biden ran on when Democrats lost House seats and made only modest gains in the Senate. The divided trial, a rare example of ballot splitting in partisan times, demonstrated that, for many voters, their disdain for the president was as personal as it was political.
Yet even in defeat, Trump demonstrated his enduring appeal to many white voters and his intense popularity in rural areas, underscoring the deep national divisions that Biden has vowed to heal.
The outcome of the race came into focus slowly as states and municipalities faced the legal and logistical challenges of voting amid the coronavirus pandemic. With a huge backlog of early and mail-in voting, some states hesitantly reported their totals that in the early hours of Wednesday painted a deceptively optimistic picture for Trump.
But as big cities in the Midwest and West began to report their totals, the race advantage shifted the electoral map in favor of Biden. By Wednesday afternoon, the former vice president had rebuilt much of the so-called Blue Wall in the Midwest, reclaiming the historically Democratic battlefields of Wisconsin and Michigan that Trump led four years ago. And on Saturday, with a slew of ballots coming from Philadelphia and Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania also took back.
While Biden fell short of claiming victory as the week progressed, he appeared multiple times in his home state of Delaware to express his confidence that he could win, while urging patience as the nation awaited the results. Even as he sought to claim something from an electoral mandate, pointing out that he had won more in the popular vote than any other candidate in history, Biden adopted a tone of reconciliation.
The time would soon come, he said, “to unite, to heal, to unite as a nation.”
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