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Cautious optimism and sentimentality were the main themes in the early hours of Tuesday night at Joe Biden’s election night event in Wilmington, Delaware.
As the Biden campaign prepared its nightly outdoor election party at a convention center in the cold and stormy Delaware air, campaign officials and event organizers refrained from pointing out any overwhelming sense of optimism or fear about the former vice president’s chances of overthrowing Donald Trump.
Biden, the Democratic presidential candidate, spent the day in his home state, going to church, visiting local voters and his childhood home. Meanwhile, Biden’s surrogates had spread across the country in an attempt to extend Biden’s campaign leadership in the polls in swing states or other states traditionally leaning Republicans.
Campaign officials pointed to the record turnout of voters as a positive sign for Biden’s campaign. More than 100 million Americans voted early.
“As many of you know, we’ve seen record buzz for turnout across the country, especially from Democrats,” Biden’s campaign manager Jenn O’Malley Dillon said Tuesday. “We believe that approximately 100 million people have voted early, most of them for Vice President Biden and Senator Harris.”
Biden’s top aides would only say that he planned to address supporters and the press at the election night meeting later in the evening. He planned to watch the election results from his home in Delaware.
Early in the evening, Democrats said they were happy with the fluidity of voting across the country throughout the day.
“The polls were opening well this morning. Minimal issues and disruptions are being addressed and the issues that arise, ”Biden’s campaign attorney Bob Bauer said in a briefing with reporters earlier that day.
Among Democratic political veterans, the most optimistic among them would only publicly predict a close race on election night.
“I think you are facing a very divided and very close election. That is, Donald Trump won by 75,000 votes in three states last time. Can you do that two choices in a row with that kind of closeness? “William Daley, former Barack Obama White House chief of staff, said in an interview Monday.
“And lose by 3 million [people in the] Popular vote? There’s a tipping point where I think you lose by four and then I think it’s quite difficult to get it back and achieve what you could do four years ago. So, as I say, all I am willing to predict is that it will be a very close election and it will probably be very late. “
For days, elected officials, veteran Democratic operatives and grassroots Democrats have expressed a mixture of optimism and fear. They have been optimistic and most polls show Biden as the big favorite to win the election. Yet at the same time, the memory of four years ago when Hillary Clinton lost to Trump despite polls showing her as the race favorite lingered.
“I’m going to urge people to stay calm, to have faith in the system,” Delaware Sen. Chris Coons, a longtime Biden ally, said of Election Night during an interview Monday. But, Coons said, he also planned to urge supporters to continue “fighting like hell to make sure all ballots are counted.”
For days, election analysts have suggested the winner might not be obvious Tuesday night. As a result, companies in the US have been covering store windows in case protests break out.
“I think you will see a lot of tension, and the tension is rooted in the anxiety created by a president who has been the most divisive president in my life,” Coons said.
On the other side of Wilmington, however, only a few storefronts had closed their windows.
O’Malley Dillon emphasized Tuesday that Biden could only go out and address fans without declaring victory or admitting defeat.
“Our expectation is that he will address the American people tonight and that is what we are focused on,” O’Malley Dillon said.
