Democrat Joe Biden defeated President Donald Trump to become the 46th president of the United States on Saturday, positioning himself to lead a nation ravaged by a historic pandemic and a confluence of economic and social upheaval.
His victory came after more than three days of uncertainty as election officials reviewed a flurry of mail-in ballots that delayed processing. Biden crossed the winning threshold of 270 Electoral College votes with a victory in Pennsylvania.
Trump refused to budge and threatened to take further legal action over the vote count.
Biden, 77, wagered his candidacy less on a distinctive political ideology than on galvanizing a broad coalition of voters around the notion that Trump posed an existential threat to American democracy. The strategy proved effective, resulting in pivotal victories in Michigan and Wisconsin, as well as Pennsylvania, once Democratic strongholds that turned against Trump in 2016.
Biden’s victory was a repudiation of Trump’s divisive leadership, and the president-elect now inherits a deeply polarized nation grappling with fundamental questions of racial justice and economic equity as it grapples with a virus that has killed more than 236,000 Americans and has reformed the rules of everyday life. lifetime.
Biden, in a statement, declared that it was time for the battered nation to “unite and heal.”
“With the campaign over, it is time to put the anger and harsh rhetoric behind us and come together as a nation,” he said. “There is nothing we cannot do if we do it together.”
Biden was on track to win the national popular vote by more than 4 million, a margin that could grow as ballots continue to be counted.
Still, Trump was not giving up.
Building on long-standing democratic tradition and signaling a potentially turbulent transfer of power, he issued a combative statement saying his campaign would take unspecified legal action. And he followed with a bombastic, capitalized tweet in which he falsely stated: “I WON THE ELECTION, I GOT 71,000,000 LEGAL VOTES. Twitter immediately flagged it as misleading.
Trump has pointed to delays in the processing of the vote in some states to allege without evidence that there was fraud and to argue that his rival was trying to take power, an extraordinary position of a sitting president that tries to cast doubt on a fundamental democratic process.
Kamala Harris made history as the first black woman to become vice president, an achievement that comes as the United States faces a reckoning over racial justice. The California senator, who is also the first person of South Asian descent elected to the vice presidency, will become the highest-ranking woman in government, four years after Trump defeated Hillary Clinton.
Trump is the first incumbent president to lose re-election since Republican George HW Bush in 1992.
He was playing golf at his Virginia country club when he lost the race. He stayed outside for hours, stopping to congratulate a girlfriend when she left, and his caravan returned to the White House with a cacophony of yelling, jeering and unsympathetic hand gestures.
In Wilmington, Delaware, near a stage that has been empty since it was erected to celebrate Election Night, people cheered and shook their fists as news reached their cell phones that the presidential race had been called for the former state senator.
In the nearby water, two men in a kayak yelled at a couple paddling in the opposite direction: “Joe won! They call him! “As people on the shore screamed and howled. Harris, in workout clothes, was shown in a video talking to Biden on the phone, exuberantly saying to the president-elect” We did it! “Biden was expected to take the stage for a drive-in movie. after dark.
Throughout the country there were parties and prayer. In New York City, spontaneous block parties broke out. People ran out of their buildings, banging on pots. They danced and high-fives with strangers between honking. Among the loudest cheers were those for passing US Postal Service trucks.
People stormed into Black Lives Matter Plaza near the White House, near where Trump had ordered protesters cleared in June, waving signs and taking cell phone photos. In Lansing, Michigan, Trump supporters and Black Lives Matter protesters filled the steps of the Capitol. The lyrics to “Amazing Grace” began to echo through the crowd, and Trump supporters laid their hands on a protester against it and prayed.
Americans showed deep interest in the presidential race. A record 103 million voted earlier this year, choosing to avoid long lines at polling places during a pandemic. With the count continued in some states, Biden had already received more than 74 million votes, more than any presidential candidate before him.
Trump’s refusal to concede has no legal implications. But it could add to the incoming administration’s challenge to unite the country after a bitter election.
Throughout the campaign, Trump repeatedly refused to commit to a peaceful transfer of power, arguing without evidence that the election could be marred by fraud. The nation has a long history of presidential candidates peacefully accepting the election result, dating back to 1800, when John Adams gave in to rival Thomas Jefferson.
It was Biden’s native Pennsylvania that put him on top, the state he invoked throughout the campaign to connect with working-class voters. Nevada also won on Saturday bringing its total to 290 Electoral College votes.
Biden received congratulations from dozens of world leaders, and his former boss, President Barack Obama, greeted him in a statement, declaring that the nation was “fortunate that Joe has what it takes to be president and already behaves that way.” .
Republicans on Capitol Hill were giving Trump and his campaign room to consider all of their legal options. It was a precarious balance for Trump’s allies as they try to support the president and avoid the risk of further consequences, but face the reality of the vote count.
On Saturday, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell had yet to make a public statement, neither congratulating Biden nor joining Trump’s complaints. But retired Republican Senator Lamar Alexander of Tennessee, close to McConnell, said, “After counting all valid votes and allowing the courts to resolve disputes, it is important to respect and accept the outcome quickly.”
More than 236,000 Americans have died during the coronavirus pandemic, nearly 10 million have been infected, and millions of jobs have been lost. The final days of the campaign faced a surge in confirmed cases in almost every state, including battlefields like Wisconsin, which passed Biden.
The pandemic will soon be tamed by Biden, and he campaigned promising a great government response, similar to what Franklin D. Roosevelt oversaw with the New Deal during the Depression of the 1930s. But Senate Republicans battled several Democratic rivals and they sought to retain a fragile majority that could serve as a brake on Biden’s ambition.
The 2020 campaign was a referendum on Trump’s handling of the pandemic, which has closed schools across the country, disrupted businesses and raised questions about the feasibility of family reunions in the run-up to the holidays.
The rapid spread of the coronavirus transformed political rallies from a standard campaign fee to gatherings that were potential public health emergencies. It also contributed to an unprecedented shift toward early and mail-in voting and led Biden to drastically reduce his travels and events to comply with restrictions. The president defied calls for caution and eventually contracted the disease himself.
Trump was affected throughout the year by negative evaluations from the public about his handling of the pandemic. This week there was another COVID-19 outbreak at the White House, making his chief of staff, Mark Meadows, sick.
Biden also drew a stark contrast to Trump during a summer of unrest over police killings of African Americans, including Breonna Taylor in Kentucky and George Floyd in Minneapolis. Their deaths sparked the largest racial protest movement since the civil rights era. Biden responded by acknowledging the racism that permeates American life, while Trump emphasized his support for the police and swung toward a message of “law and order” that resonated with his largely white base.
The third president to be indicted, albeit acquitted in the Senate, Trump will leave office having left an indelible mark on a term defined by breaking White House rules and a daily whirlwind of rotation, partisan division and Twitter blasts.
Trump’s team has filed a series of lawsuits in battle states, some of which were immediately rejected by the justices. His personal attorney, Rudy Giuliani, was holding a press conference in Philadelphia threatening further legal action when the race was called.
Biden, born in Scranton, Pennsylvania, and raised in Delaware, was one of the youngest candidates ever elected to the Senate. Before taking office, his wife and daughter were killed and his two sons were seriously injured in a car accident in 1972.
Traveling nightly on a train from Washington back to Wilmington, Biden created a common-man political persona to accompany powerful Senate posts, including chairman of the Senate Judiciary and Foreign Relations Committees. Some aspects of his record drew critical scrutiny from fellow Democrats, including his support for the 1994 crime bill, his vote for the 2003 Iraq war, and his handling of Clarence’s Supreme Court hearings. Thomas.
Biden’s presidential campaign in 1988 was ended on accusations of plagiarism, and his next candidacy in 2008 ended quietly. But later that year, he was chosen to be Barack Obama’s running mate and became an influential vice president, directing the administration’s outreach to both the Capitol and Iraq.
While his reputation was polished by his time in office and his deep friendship with Obama, Biden stayed on the sidelines of Clinton and chose not to run in 2016 after his adult son Beau died of brain cancer the previous year.
Trump’s term pushed Biden into one more career when he declared that “the very soul of the nation is at stake.”
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