Biden wins White House,
vowing new direction for divided US
By JONATHAN LEMIRE and ZEKE
MILLER
November 07, 2020 "Information
Clearing House" - WASHINGTON (AP) —
Democrat Joe Biden defeated President Donald Trump
to become the 46th president of the United States on
Saturday, positioning himself to lead a nation
gripped by a historic pandemic and a confluence of
economic and social turmoil.
His victory came after more than three days of
uncertainty as election officials sorted through a
surge of mail-in votes that delayed the processing
of some ballots. Biden crossed 270 Electoral College
votes with a win in Pennsylvania.
Trump refused to concede, threatening further legal
action on ballot counting.
Biden, 77, staked his candidacy less on any
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, onetime Democratic bastions
that had flipped to Trump in 2016.
Biden, in a statement, said he was humbled by the
victory and it was time for the battered nation to
set aside its differences.
“It’s time for America to unite. And to heal,” he
said.
“With the campaign over, it’s time to put the anger
and the harsh rhetoric behind us and come together
as a nation,” Biden said. “There’s nothing we can’t
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.
Trump was not giving up.
Departing from longstanding democratic tradition and
signaling a potentially turbulent transfer of power,
he issued a combative statement while he was on his
Virginia golf course. It said his campaign would
take unspecified legal actions and he would “not
rest until the American People have the honest vote
count they deserve and that Democracy demands.”
Trump has pointed to delays in processing the vote
in some states to allege with no evidence that there
was voter fraud and to argue that his rival was
trying to seize power — an extraordinary charge by a
sitting president trying to sow doubt about a
bedrock democratic process.
Kamala Harris also made history as the first Black
woman to become vice president, an achievement that
comes as the U.S. faces a reckoning on 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 ever to serve in government, four years after
Trump defeated Hillary Clinton.
Trump is the first incumbent president to lose
reelection since Republican George H.W. Bush in
1992.
Early Saturday he left the White House for his
Virginia golf club dressed in golf shoes, a
windbreaker and a white hat as the results gradually
expanded Biden’s lead in Pennsylvania.
Trump repeated his unsupported allegations of
election fraud and illegal voting on Twitter. One of
his tweets, quickly flagged as potentially
misleading by Twitter, claimed: “I WON THIS
ELECTION, BY A LOT!”
In Wilmington, Delaware, near a stage that has stood
empty since it was erected to celebrate a potential
victory on Election Night, people cheered and pumped
their fists as the news that the presidential race
had been called for the state’s former senator
arrived on their cell phones.
On the nearby water, two men in a kayak yelled to a
couple paddling by in the opposite direction, “Joe
won! They called it!” as people on the shore whooped
and hollered. Harris, in workout gear, was shown on
video speaking to Biden on the phone, exuberantly
telling the president-elect “We did it!” Biden was
expected to take the stage for a drive-in rally
after dark.
Across 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-fived with strangers amid
honking horns.
People streamed into Black Lives Matter Plaza near
the White House, waving signs and taking cellphone
pictures. In Lansing, Michigan, Trump supporters and
Black Lives Matter demonstrators filled the Capitol
steps. The lyrics to “Amazing Grace” began to echo
through the crowd, and Trump supporters laid their
hands on a counter protester, and prayed.
Americans showed deep interest in the presidential
race. A record 103 million voted early this year,
opting to avoid waiting in long lines at polling
locations during a pandemic. With counting
continuing 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 of bringing the country
together 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
outcome of elections, dating back to 1800, when John
Adams conceded to his rival Thomas Jefferson.
It was Biden’s native Pennsylvania that put him over
the top, the state he invoked throughout the
campaign to connect with working class voters. He
also won Nevada on Sunday pushing his total to 290
Electoral College votes.
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 played out against the
backdrop of a surge in confirmed cases in nearly
every state, including battlegrounds such as
Wisconsin that swung to Biden.
The pandemic will soon be Biden’s to tame, and he
campaigned pledging a big government response, akin
to what Franklin D. Roosevelt oversaw with the New
Deal during the Depression of the 1930s. But Senate
Republicans fought back several Democratic
challengers and looked to retain a fragile majority
that could serve as a check on such Biden ambition.
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