Joe Biden elected 46th president of the United States.

WASHINGTON – Democrat Joe Biden took over as president of the United States on Saturday, several major television networks said, as voters narrowly rejected Republican President Donald Trump’s tumultuous leadership and accepted Biden’s promise to fight the coronavirus pandemic and fix the economy in a divided nation.

When the former vice president enters the White House on January 20, the oldest person to take office at 78, he will likely face a difficult task ruling in deeply polarized Washington, underscored by record national turnout in a fight for the end.

His projected victory came after four days of scathing suspense over the outcome of Tuesday’s election, with vote counting in a handful of battlefield states underway thanks to a flood of mail-in ballots.

Biden said Friday that he hoped to win the race, but failed to deliver a victory speech. A Trump adviser acknowledged Friday that the race had leaned against Trump, but said the president was not ready to admit defeat.

Biden had a 273-214 lead in the electoral college vote determining the winner, having won Pennsylvania’s 20 electoral votes as of this report to place it over the 270 he needed to secure the presidency, according to Edison Research.

To ensure victory, Biden faced unprecedented challenges. These included Republican-led efforts to limit voting by mail at a time when a record number of people were required to vote by mail due to the pandemic, which has killed more than 235,000 people in the United States.

Both sides characterized the 2020 election as one of the most crucial in American history, as important as the votes during the Civil War of 1860 and the Great Depression of 1930.

For months, officials on both sides raised the specter that the United States could not get a fair vote.

In the end, however, voting at the polls proceeded with limited interruption, as millions patiently lined up to vote. Thousands of election supervisors from both parties worked for four days to make sure the votes were counted.

The electoral drama is likely to drag on for weeks, if not months. Trump, 74, is challenging the vote in court, but legal experts said his challenges had little chance of affecting the outcome.

Biden’s victory was fueled by strong support from groups including women, African Americans, white voters with college degrees, and city dwellers. He was more than four million votes ahead of Trump in the national popular vote count.

Nation in confusion

Biden, who has spent half a century in public life as a U.S. senator and then vice president under Trump’s predecessor Barack Obama, will inherit a nation in crisis from the coronavirus pandemic and related economic slowdown, as well as disruptive protests against racism and police brutality. .

Biden has said his first priority will be to develop a plan to contain and recover from the pandemic, promising to improve access to testing and, unlike Trump, to follow the advice of leading scientists and public health officials.

Biden has also vowed to restore a sense of normalcy in the White House after a presidency in which Trump praised authoritarian foreign leaders, scorned long-standing global alliances, refused to repudiate white supremacists and cast doubt on the legitimacy of the US electoral system.

Despite his victory, Biden will have failed to deliver the radical repudiation of Trump that Democrats hoped for, reflecting the deep support the president enjoys despite his tumultuous four years in office.

This could complicate his campaign promises to reverse key parts of Trump’s legacy. These include deep Trump tax cuts that especially benefited hardline and wealthy corporations and immigration policies, efforts to dismantle the 2010 Obamacare healthcare law, and Trump’s abandonment of international agreements such as the agreement. Paris climate and the Iran nuclear deal.

If Republicans keep control of the United States Senate, they would likely block much of its legislative agenda, including expanding health care and fighting climate change. That prospect could hinge on the outcome of four undecided Senate races, including two at Georgia.

Harris also makes history

Biden, who will become the 46th President of the United States, staged unsuccessful presidential bids in 1988 and 2008.

Her running mate, US Sen. Kamala Harris, will become the first woman, the first African-American and the first American of Asian descent to serve as vice president, the second office in the country.

For Trump, it was an unsettling ending after a staggering political rise. The real estate developer who established a national brand as a reality TV personality upset Democrat Hillary Clinton to win the presidency in 2016 in her first run for elected office.

Four years later, he becomes the first US president to lose a re-election bid since Republican George HW Bush in 1992.

Despite his draconian restrictions on immigration, Trump made surprising gains among Latino voters. He also won battle states, like Florida, where his promise to prioritize the economy even as the coronavirus threat increased seemed to have resonated.

In the end, however, Trump failed to significantly broaden his appeal beyond a committed core of rural and working-class white voters who embraced his right-wing populism and “America First” nationalism.

Before the election, Trump had refused to commit to a peaceful transfer of power if he lost to Biden, and he stayed true to that approach. He falsely declared victory long before the count was completed.

Ahead of the projection of Biden’s victory and with Trump’s chances of reelection fading as more votes were counted, the president launched an extraordinary assault on the country’s democratic process from the White House on Thursday, falsely claiming he was being stealing the elections.

Without offering proof, Trump attacked poll workers and alleged fraud in states where the results of a dwindling set of uncounted votes brought Biden closer to victory.

“This is a case where they are trying to steal an election,” Trump said Thursday.

Asking for patience as the votes were counted, Biden responded on Twitter: “No one is going to take away our democracy. Not now, not never “.

Legal challenges

Republicans are trying to raise at least $ 60 million to fund legal challenges brought by Trump over the election results, three sources familiar with the matter said Friday.

The Trump campaign has filed lawsuits in several states over Tuesday’s election as Biden moved closer to winning the White House.

“They want $ 60 million,” said a Republican donor who received requests from the campaign and the Republican National Committee (RNC).

Two other sources said the campaign wanted as much as $ 100 million for the joint fundraising committee it maintains with the RNC, a sign of the scale of the legal fight the campaign hopes to mount.

All three sources spoke to Reuters about the money requests on condition of anonymity due to the sensitivity of the matter. The Trump campaign and the RNC did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

The request for funds comes as the Trump and Biden campaigns gear up for a potentially lengthy legal battle.

Since voting ended Tuesday, the Trump campaign has sent email and text requests alleging foul play and seeking donations, although the fine print indicates that more than half of the money raised would go to pay off the debts of the Bell.

Trump, who started the race with a strong financial advantage, ended his campaign struggling to keep up with fundraising giant Biden.

A Trump adviser described the campaign’s litigation strategy thus far as chaotic, disorganized and a “disservice to the president.”

The adviser, who also requested anonymity, said Trump’s team appeared to have been caught off guard by the election results and was not prepared to mount a legal fight.

The campaign has already lost court rulings in hotly contested states, including Georgia and Nevada, but won a victory in Pennsylvania on Friday, when a court ordered election officials to set aside provisional ballots cast on Election Day by voters whose ballots absent or mailed. they were received on time.

Trump’s senior campaign adviser, David Bossie, a prominent conservative activist who leads the advocacy group Citizens United, has been chosen to lead post-election legal challenges, according to a source familiar with Trump’s campaign strategy.

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