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Joe Biden in Detroit on March 9, 2020. Photo: Brendan McDermid / Reuters. reuters_tickers
This content was published on November 7, 2020 – July 11:37 PM
Trevor Hanekt, Steve Holland
WILMINGTON, Del. / Washington (Reuters) – Democrat Joe Biden won the U.S. presidential race on Saturday after voters narrowly rejected the stormy leadership of Republican Donald Trump in exchange for Biden’s promise to fight the pandemic coronavirus and reform the economy in a divided country.
Biden won the 20th caucus for the state of Pennsylvania, raising the total number of votes to more than the 270 needed to win, prompting all major television networks to declare him the winner after four days of intense emotion following the election of the Tuesday.
Biden said on Twitter: “I am honored and humbled by the trust the American people have placed in me and the (full) Vice President-elect Harris. A record number of Americans have voted in the face of unprecedented obstacles.
“With the campaign over, the time has come to move beyond anger and harsh statements and come together as one people. It is time for the United States to come together and resign.”
Several world leaders were quick to congratulate Biden, including British Prime Minister Boris Johnson, Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and German Chancellor Angela Merkel, making it difficult for Trump to continue the election fraud charge.
Trump, who was playing golf when the media announced his opponent’s victory, was quick to accuse Biden of “rushing to falsely declare his victory.”
“The elections have not yet been decided,” he added.
State election officials across the country say there is no evidence of major wrongdoing.
When the victory was announced, cheers and cheers echoed through the hotel lobbies where Biden’s aides were staying and across the country.
As activists exchanged elbows and mid-air hugs at the hotel, a Biden aide said it was “worth every minute” of waiting.
Harris posted a video tweet congratulating Biden, saying, “Joe, we got it!” Harris will be the first woman, the first dark American and the first Asian American to hold the vice presidency, the second-highest office in the nation.
Loud applause was heard outside of Washington, DC. In one area, people came out of balconies, shouting, waving and banging on pots. The noise increased as the news spread. Some burst into tears. And the music began to play.
In Brooklyn’s Bedford Stuyvesant neighborhood, people cheered, honked their horns, and cheered as news of Biden’s victory spread. Some danced on the emergency stairs of a building, while others chanted “yes” as they passed.
However, in a reminder of the country’s division, Trump supporters gathered outside the legislative headquarters in Michigan, Pennsylvania and Arizona.
Protesters in Phoenix chanted that Trump had won and one of the protesters said, “We will win in court.”
Biden was congratulated by former Democratic President Barack Obama and Republican Senator Mitt Romney. Sen. Lindsey Graham, a Trump ally, asked the Justice Department to investigate allegations of voting irregularities.
The broadcaster’s announcement of Biden’s victory came amid concerns dominating Trump’s team about his strategy going forward, and pressure on him to choose a more professional legal team to clarify where They believe that vote rigging has occurred and show evidence of that.
A Trump loyalist said the outgoing president was unwilling to admit defeat even though he would not disqualify enough votes in the recount to alter the result.
Biden’s victory ends Trump’s stormy years in the White House, during which he imposed tough policies toward immigrants, waged a trade war with China, abandoned international agreements, underestimated the severity of the Corona epidemic, and sparked a deep division among American families with their provocative speeches and lies and their willingness to abandon democratic norms.
A Biden campaign official said he was expected to deliver a speech to the nation after 8 p.m. local time (1 a.m. Sunday GMT) from his hometown of Wilmington, Delaware.
* An arduous task awaits you
Biden enters the White House on January 20, as the oldest president to assume power at the age of 78, and will likely face the daunting task of ruling a country that is deeply polarized, as highlighted by record turnout in a battle to the end.
The Edison Research Center said Biden, the former vice president, got 273 votes from the electoral college compared to 214 for Trump, after he drew votes from the Pennsylvania assembly, to exceed the 270 votes needed to win.
To win, Biden faced unprecedented challenges, including Republican efforts to limit voting by mail, while a record number of voters cast their votes this way due to the pandemic that killed more than 235,000 in the United States.
Both parties described the 2020 election as one of the most important elections in American history and just as important as the elections that took place during the Civil War in the 1860s and the Great Depression in the 1930s.
For months, officials on both sides expressed concern about the impossibility of holding fair elections in the United States. In the end, however, the voting took place in the polling stations without major problems. Thousands of election supervisors from both parties worked for four days to ensure the vote count.
Biden won with strong support from groups that included women, African Americans, white college voters and urban dwellers. He surpassed Trump in the popular vote nationwide by more than four million votes.
Biden, who spent 50 years in politics as a senator and then vice president under Barack Obama, Trump’s predecessor, will inherit a country reeling from the turmoil of the coronavirus pandemic and its economic slowdown, as well as protests against racism and police brutality.
Biden said establishing a plan to contain and recover from the pandemic is his top priority and vowed to work to provide more evidence and comply with the advice of public health officials and scientists, unlike what Trump was doing.
He also vowed to restore normalcy in the White House after a presidential term during which Trump praised autocratic foreign leaders, failed to respect long-standing global alliances, refused to repudiate those who believed in white supremacy, and cast doubt. about the electoral system in the United States.
Despite his victory, Biden did not achieve the landslide victory over Trump that Democrats had hoped for, reflecting the strong support Trump still enjoys despite his turbulent four years in office.
This could complicate Biden’s campaign promises to dismantle key parts of the Trump-era legacy, including Trump’s massive tax cuts that specifically benefited the wealthy and corporations, as well as strict immigration policies and his efforts to repeal the Obamaker Healthcare Act of 2010 and its withdrawal from international agreements. Like the Paris climate agreement and the Iran nuclear deal.
If Republicans continue to dominate the Senate, they will block much of Biden’s legislative agenda, including expanding health care and fighting climate change. This may depend on the outcome of four unresolved races for council seats, including two in Georgia.
A peaceful transfer of power?
For Trump, 74, Biden’s victory marks the haunting end of a staggering political rise. Trump, the real estate developer who has gained nationwide fame as a reality TV star, beat Democrat Hillary Clinton in 2016 after her first nomination for office. Four years later, he became the first US president to lose his bid for a second term since Republican President George HW Bush in 1992.
Despite his strict restrictions on immigration, Trump has achieved success among Hispanics. He won crucial states like Florida, where his promise to prioritize the economy even if it meant increased coronavirus risk seemed to resonate.
But Trump ultimately failed to extend his support beyond white rural voters and working-class people who favor his right-wing populism and “America first.”
Before the election, Trump refused to commit to a peaceful transfer of power if Biden wins and remains in that position. He declared his victory in the elections without support and long before the vote counting was complete.
Before Biden was expected to win and with Trump’s chances of winning the presidency for another term dwindling as the votes were counted, the president launched an unusual attack on the democratic process from the White House on Thursday, claiming without foundation that elections were being stolen from him.
Without any evidence, Trump attacked the poll workers and claimed that there was fraud in the states that brought Biden closer to victory thanks to the results of the votes that had not yet been counted.
(Prepared by Mustafa Saleh, Yasmine Hussein and Moaz Abdul Aziz for the Arab Bulletin – Edited by Nadia Al-Juwaili)
