Because the Philippine political system has been largely modeled after that of the United States, Filipinos have an abiding interest in knowing how the system is supposed to work. We have always looked to America for lessons on how to improve our own political processes so as to keep them aligned to the democratic ideal.
The arrival in 2016 of Donald Trump as president of the United States, however, made us rethink all that. Almost overnight, America began to look a bit like the Philippines — uncertain about the stability of its institutions, jolted by the deep resentment of many of its citizens against the political establishment, and shocked by the readiness of a president to cater to the darkest and unexamined instincts of a resentful public.
For one, it is the unusually prolonged period for counting the votes, and the public restlessness this has engendered, that has given rise to comparisons of the latest US presidential election with those from fledgling democracies. Part of this delay is due to the decision of a big number of American voters to request for mail-in ballots in view of the risks brought about by the ongoing pandemic.
The unprecedented number of voters opting for this mode of casting their ballots has brought its own problems. Some forgot to sign the form that came with the ballot. Others gave conflicting information that required verification. There were voters who requested mail-in ballots but decided at the last minute to cast their votes in person. Some ballots were postmarked within the allowable period, but failed to arrive on election day. All mail-in ballots had to be “processed” separately before they could be counted. In some states, this was done weeks or days before election day. In others, it could only be done on the day itself.
The electoral commissions of almost every state anticipated most of these possible issues. To assure them the system is working, they enabled all absentee voters to track their mailed ballots in real time. Authorized election volunteers were deployed to contact voters whose ballots needed authentication, and to ask them to help election officials “cure” these so they won’t be invalidated. Decisions were made beforehand as to when and how to process and count the mail-in ballots.
But, ignoring all these efforts to assure the public of the transparency of the system, President Trump wasted no time in questioning the legitimacy of absentee voting. He said, without showing how, that it opens a large space for committing fraud. During the presidential debates, he claimed that mailed ballots in known Republican strongholds had been seen scattered around garbage dumps, implying that sinister forces were out to sabotage the elections. He gave no proof to substantiate this reckless claim. He expressly told his supporters to vote in person, and took every opportunity to cast doubt on the validity of mailed ballots.
It was as though he was already preparing the ground to declare a failure of elections in battleground states where the presidential race was expected to be close. So familiar is this infuriating tactic to Pinoys that the creative minds among them have recently filled social media with “Hello Garci” memes showing Trump on the phone desperately telling “Garci” to reverse the steady whittling down of his early vote lead.
Like the proverbial local politician who ascribes every defeat to electoral fraud, Trump has predictably gone to court to demand a stop to the counting in places where he is losing. He has impugned the integrity of the electoral process in those counties and states in which the results were not those he expected—even when the local officials who had oversight functions over the elections were from his own party.
He vigorously pushed for the “midnight” appointment of his nominee to the US Supreme Court, in total anticipation of the inevitability that election-related petitions would come before the high court, which he expects to vote along party lines. Asked to affirm his trust in the American electoral process, he refused to make a clear commitment that he would respect the election results. He insisted that he would do so only if he was fully convinced that the voting had been fraud-free—a strange thing for a sitting president to say.
By insinuating, again with no proof, that “they are stealing the elections” and “finding” more votes for his opponent in the crucial battleground states where he was being overtaken, he supplies his most ardent supporters with reasons to “stand by,” ready to defend the vote by their militant presence. In the process, he summons the dangerous dark twin of “people power,” which, in our own post-Edsa politics, has done much to downgrade the idea of active citizenship.
Indeed, no other president in recent American political history has tested the outer limits of democracy in the United States as much as Donald Trump. His rise to the presidency showed the weaknesses of the institutional guardrails that had hitherto kept reckless adventurers like him from entering America’s highest office.
His looming exit from the White House will hopefully energize the pushback against rightwing populism and authoritarianism everywhere. It may, however, take a while before the institutional damage he leaves behind is repaired. For, in many ways, the rise of Trump is a symptom of, as much as it is a reaction to, the failure of the structures of democratic governance to check the excesses of neoliberalism and corporate greed. It will not be enough for his successor to merely aspire to bring back the status quo before Trump.
President Moon Jae-in sent a congratulatory message to US President-elect Joe Biden and Vice President-elect Kamala Harris, expressing expectations for joint efforts to develop Seoul-Washington ties.
“Congratulations to @JoeBiden and @KamalaHarris. Our alliance is strong and the bond between our two countries is rock-solid,” Moon wrote on Twitter.
“I very much look forward to working with you for our shared values,” Moon added. “I have great expectations of advancing and opening up the future development of our bilateral relations.”
He ended the short note with “Katchi Kapshida!,” a Korean expression that means “Let’s go together!”
Moon used his social media account to congratulate the Biden team, instead of a formal diplomatic channel, apparently in consideration that President Donald Trump is not accepting defeat.
Moon is expected to seek to send an official congratulatory letter to Biden or hold phone talks with him after a power transition process gets under way in earnest. (Yonhap)
The Japanese government is preparing to take policy measures in areas such as global warming, with an eye toward a transfer of power in the United States as former Vice President Joe Biden is gaining an advantage as votes are counted in the U.S. presidential election.
Prime Minister Yoshihide Suga repeatedly emphasized his proactive stance on climate change at a meeting of the House of Councillors’ Budget Committee on Friday.
“Active measures to combat global warming will lead to significant growth by bringing about changes in the industrial structure, the economy and society,” Suga said.
A target of reducing greenhouse gas emissions to net zero by 2050, which Suga set in his first policy speech, was made in anticipation of the possibility of Biden taking office, according to sources close to the prime minister.
Biden has referred to a return to the Paris Agreement, an international framework for combating global warming, from which the U.S. withdrew under President Donald Trump. The Japanese government wants the U.S. and Japan to be in step in the international community.
A senior government official believes that Biden’s foreign and security policies will be moderate toward Japan, and similar views have been spreading throughout the government.
Former U.S. President Barack Obama, with whom Biden worked as vice president, became in 2014 the first U.S. president to explicitly state that the Senkaku Islands in Okinawa Prefecture are within the scope of Article 5 of the Japan-U.S. Security Treaty, which obliges the United States to defend Japan. The Japanese government plans to confirm the same stance with the United States as soon as possible, if Biden is elected to the White House.
“[Even after the presidential election,] the Japan-U.S. alliance will continue to be the crux of our foreign and security policy and the foundation of peace, prosperity and freedom for the Indo-Pacific region and the international community,” Suga said at an upper house budget committee meeting on Friday.
In the meantime, even if Biden is reportedly assured of his victory, Suga will not immediately hold congratulatory telephone talks, but instead will wait to see how other countries act.
“It’s not a good idea to provoke Trump, who is claiming irregularities in vote counting,” a senior Japanese official at the Foreign Ministry said.
By The Washington Post Amy B Wang, Meryl Kornfield, Shayna Jacobs, Susan Svrluga, Maura Ewing, Christine Spolar, Jared Goyette Almost as soon as television networks called the presidential race Saturday morning for former vice president Joe Biden, his supporters began flocking to the streets.
The celebrations that ensued – unbridled jubilation, dancing, singing and chanting – represented a release of emotions after an excruciating four-day wait for the election results, but also of a release of four years of pent-up frustration and anger at President Donald Trump, some said.
The widespread sound of cheering, honking, pot-banging and more erupted in New York City, Philadelphia, Washington, Minneapolis and other largely Democratic cities Trump has disparaged. Some rejoiced at the imminent departure of Trump from the White House, while others touted the historic ascendancy of Biden’s running mate, Kamala Harris, who will become the nation’s first Black and first Asian American woman vice president.
“No more years! No more years!” a crowd of hundreds chanted in Philadelphia.
Frankie Rowles, 32, was in a downtown Philadelphia food hall when the news broke. He ran into the streets and joined a growing crowd of celebrators across the street from the city’s convention center, where votes were tallied this week.
He immediately drew his cellphone and started live-streaming himself jumping up and down.
“Yeah we did it, Philadelphia! Aaaagh!”
He crouched down for a minute, gathering his thoughts. “I’m so proud of us,” he said.
A pro-Trump camp was set up across the street, blaring country music from a loudspeaker. Biden supporters danced to the music, strangers hugged, everyone cheered.
Adrienne Trice, 55, hugged her 11-year-old daughter Laila Williamson and swayed to the tunes.
A tear streamed down Laila’s cheek. As a young Black girl, she said she was heartened to see a Black woman take such a powerful seat.
“It’s about time,” she said.
Across the street, the mood was somber. “This is fraud, we know it’s fraud,” said a Trump supporter who declined to give his name. “We’re going to take it to the mat.”
A growing crowd of Biden supporters – about 100 at noon – chanted: “Na na na na, na na na na, hey hey, goodbye!”
In the Squirrel Hill neighborhood of Pittsburgh, people rushed into one intersection shortly after 1 p.m., hoisting American flags and bursting out loud with laughter. Marie Norman, 55, was among those celebrating.
“I’ve been waiting four years for this,” she said. “It’s been misery for four years, and people can finally feel relief.”
Ivan Frank, 82, said he had made 2,800 phone calls to rally voters to support Biden. He beamed at the corner of Murray and Forbes avenues as people danced around him and dashed into the center of the intersection, American flags flying.
“How about it?” he said. “We did it!”
In New York, the show of support was especially reminiscent of the early days of the pandemic, when residents poured out of their apartments nightly to applaud hospital workers and first responders risking their lives to treat coronavirus patients. Shouting and music could be heard from rooftops across the city.
By the afternoon, a sea of people congregated in Times Square celebrating the Biden victory – a startling scene in a tourist hub that has been largely empty since the start of the pandemic. Broadway theaters have been dark since March and are not slated to reopen until late next year. A performer in head-to-toe tie-dye blared “Ding-Dong! The Witch Is Dead” from “The Wizard of Oz” from a speaker fixed to his bicycle.
Jason Olson and Sarah Young, 44 and 32, a couple from Harlem, left their house in pajamas to join a celebration in their neighborhood that began almost immediately after news organizations called the race.
“When we left there was a group of people opening champagne in the street,” Young said. The widespread display of joy reminded the couple of an event they witnessed when they used to live in California: the San Francisco Giants winning the World Series.
Young, a stage director whose career as been affected by the pandemic and who never left the city during the height of the coronavirus spread, said Trump “utterly failed us and the rest of the country.”
Outside of Trump International Hotel in Columbus Circle, a large crowd waved signs and cheered as drivers in traffic pounded their horns and raised their fists.
A woman wearing a T-shirt that read “Nasty Woman,” a throwback to Trump’s famous Hillary Clinton insult, danced with a pink feather boa atop a parked black SUV. While drivers honked, passengers hung out car windows, some with “Biden/Harris” signs and others shouting obscenities aimed at Trump.
Some cars blared the rap song “FDT,” an acronym for an expletive and the president’s name. People throughout the city had looks of joy, evident even with most faces covered by masks.
The results came a week after people in the city waited in line for as long as five hours to submit ballots during an overwhelmed early voting period, the first in the state during any presidential contest.
In Washington, the sounds of honking and cheering echoed across the Mall, where the merriment over Trump’s displacement could be heard near the White House. Revelers near the Capitol banged on pots with wooden spoons, cheering. “Kamala!” some joggers shouted to them, raising their fists in the air.
At one point, a group of two dozen bicyclists cruised down East Capitol Street NE, blasting Kool and the Gang’s “Celebration.”
In the afternoon, as Trump’s motorcade returned to the White House from his golf course in Sterling, Va., where he had spent the morning, crowds celebrating Biden and Harris’s win booed loudly.
In Minneapolis, a coalition of progressive groups had organized a march Saturday morning that was intended to focus on demanding that every vote be counted. The gathering took on a festive atmosphere when news of the race being called for Biden spread among the crowd.
An Aztec dance group in full traditional regalia and a robust drum section led the group of about 1,000 people in a march that started near the remains of what was once the Minneapolis 3rd Precinct police station – which had been burned down in the unrest following the killing of George Floyd – and proceeded to Powderhorn Park. A DJ played sets from a stage set up on the back of a truck.
“Today it feels really good, it feels like spring,” said Aurin Chowdhury, 23, of Minneapolis. “I’ve been so stressed out this whole year, especially this month. It feels relieving, like I’m taking a breath of fresh air.”
Juwaria Jarma, 16, filmed the celebrations with her phone. She said the march reflected the demands progressive groups would have of a Biden administration moving forward.
“People are energized, people want to do the work and are invested in it,” said Jarma, who showed up to represent the group Minneapolis Youth Climate Strike.
Susana De León, an immigration lawyer, said she had seen firsthand the pain caused by the Trump administration’s immigration policies. She noted that it was important her group was there to represent indigenous culture as the event was occurring on what was once Dakota land.
“We came here to demand our votes be counted, but now we are here to celebrate,” she said.
In Chicago late Saturday afternoon, hundreds of people gathered along Wacker Drive to celebrate. The crowd stretched from Michigan Avenue in front of Trump Tower and across all of the Chicago River bridges.
People played drums, sang, waved flags, and otherwise enjoyed the almost summerlike temperatures. Many sang the Queen song “We Are the Champions” in front of Trump’s hotel and condo development.
Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot told reporters Saturday that she hoped Trump would concede soon.
“He will get there. I certainly hope he will get there, whether he says those words or not. The time has come for the transition to start,” she said.
Lightfoot said she considered Harris’s win “historic” and that it showed young people of color that “in America truly so many things are possible.”
“The news of the finality of this electoral process opens up boundless of possibilities of science, the rule of law, respect for civil rights, and respect for our most vulnerable residents and communities,” she said. “There is a reason people all over world breathed huge sigh of relief today. Make no mistake, America is back.”
Despite Biden’s tally, Trump’s supporters insist the election is not yet over
InternationalNov 08. 2020In Atlanta, 16-year-old Chandler Crump speaks at a pro-Trump event at the Georgia Capitol in Atlanta on Saturday. MUST CREDIT: Photo by Kevin D. Liles for The Washington Post
By The Washington Post · Hannah Knowles, Mark Berman, Nick Miroff · NATIONAL, POLITICS PHOENIX – Activists and supporters of President Donald Trump insisted Saturday that the presidential election was not finished, displaying defiance after Joe Biden secured victory in the closely fought race.
From here in the Arizona desert to Philadelphia, Trump backers echoed the president’s attacks on the integrity of the election, which continued Saturday with his statement that “this election is far from over.” They made baseless allegations of voter fraud and pledged to keep fighting in court while claiming Biden did not legitimately win.
“We know the election is being stolen,” said Michael Breitenbach, a 47-year-old construction manager in Philadelphia who was holding a Trump flag Saturday morning not long after news outlets called the race. “When the count is fair and legal, Donald Trump will have won by a landslide, and you can bank on that.”
Trump’s supporters have only considered him a winner – in business, as a celebrity, and ultimately as president of the United States. The election results, revealed Saturday after days of waiting for straggling states to tally their returns, indicated otherwise this time: Biden has won at least 279 electoral votes, enough to claim the presidency. He also garnered 74.5 million individual votes – the most in the nation’s history and more than 4 million above Trump’s total.
Instead of accepting those results, the president’s devotees spurned them. They gathered at so-called “Stop the Steal” rallies at state capitols across the country to claim, without evidence, that ballot counts favorable to Biden stem from a sprawling, multistate conspiracy to hijack the vote through fraud. It is unclear how widespread such views are beyond these events and high-profile conservative figures, and some GOP figures have pushed back on claims of a rigged election.
In big, largely Democratic cities across the country, many of which were rocked by somber demonstrations against racial injustice this year, Biden’s victory spurred joyous celebrations and collective relief. In other places, though, it fueled pockets of protest from those refusing to acknowledge Trump had lost.
“I won’t accept it as legitimate,” said Leonard Horner, 51, during a pro-Trump rally at the Arizona Capitol.
More than 300 people gathered in Salem, Ore., outside the state capitol to wave Trump flags and decry the outcome of the election. Among them were members of the far-right Proud Boys and numerous people affiliated with self-styled militia groups who were armed with assault-style rifles.
Don Thomas, 64, of McMinnville, Ore., said he believes Democrats are ignoring the legal challenges Trump has mounted in pivotal states, and he wants to make sure “all those question marks are answered” before there is an official winner.
“A lot of places are voting by mail for the first time, and because of the newness of the system, we have to make sure it’s being done right,” Thomas said. “If we lose legally, I’ll accept that. But there’s so many ways this can be done wrong.”
In Harrisburg, Pa., one of the events drew about 200 people, with large Trump 2020 flags and “Legal Votes Matter” signs waving as they milled near the state capitol. Some said they thought there should be a recount or even another vote entirely.
“I’m here for the integrity of the election, no matter whether you’re a Republican or Democrat,” said Nicole, a 39-year-old from Hegins, Pa., who declined to give her last name.
Postings shared on social media advertised “Stop the Steal” events that called for “peaceful protests” in key American cities, though it was not clear how many people would turn out for all of them.
The “steal” calls have been amplified on social media by Donald Trump Jr. and promoted by conservative activists such as Amy Kremer, a former congressional candidate in Georgia and co-founder of the group Women for Trump.
Earlier in the week, Kremer used a Facebook page with more than 100,000 followers called Women for America First to channel traffic to a “Stop the Steal” group, which quickly collected more than 360,000 members before it was shut down Thursday for violating the site’s rules.
At the “Stop the Steal” event in the Pennsylvania capital, Amy Lee, a 55-year-old who had been a poll watcher in Pittsburgh, said she was upset about not being allowed closer to the counting.
“I’m here to support Trump,” she said. “I believe Biden stole the election.”
When asked how, Lee said she thought it was “mathematically impossible” given the size of the pro-Trump events, trains and flotillas compared with Biden’s events, which often adhered to coronavirus-focused public health restrictions.
Trump 2020 flags flew over the ornate steps of the Michigan Capitol in Lansing, while several hundred Trump supporters denied the results and chanted: “We won.” Speakers used a megaphone to denounce the vote as fraudulent; passing trucks honked their horns in apparent support.
While they were demonstrating, members of Michigan’s legislature gathered inside for a special Saturday meeting as they began an inquiry into the election’s handling, which Michigan officials have repeatedly defended as legitimate, accurate and fair. Biden won Michigan by about 148,000 votes, an about-face after Trump won the state by a slim margin in 2016.
Other Trump backers were more sanguine about the outcome. Paul Ritz rode his motorcycle Saturday to a bar in New Hudson, Mich. The 53-year-old, who works in construction, said he loves Trump but was tired of politics and was relieved the election is over.
“I want to move on and I want to see other things,” Ritz said, his tattooed arms resting on the New Hudson Inn’s finished wood bar as he drank a Dos Equis. “I’m tired of best friends being enemies.”
Jack Marcinick, a lifelong Republican who twice voted for Trump, said he was disappointed at the results and has questions about how absentee ballots were handled. But he still accepted what happened.
“Do I think elections are clean? No,” said the 71-year-old in Butler County, Pa. “But my opinion is: It’s done. It’s over. We will live with the decision.”
Here in Phoenix, demonstrators outside a Maricopa County, Ariz., vote-counting center insisted the race had not been called. A man wearing a “Q” cape – a reference to the QAnon conspiracy theory – told a gathering of dozens of people that they should not believe the media or “the liars” inside the elections facility, where workers were still counting ballots. As of Saturday night, Biden was leading in Arizona by just more than 20,000 votes, but the state had not yet been called for either side.
“It’s not official yet,” John Ryer, a 53-year-old Scottsdale resident at the gathering, said of Biden’s win.
As media outlet after media outlet called the election for Biden, Neianne Castro was disappointed but not surprised.
“People will vote for Biden because they hate Trump,” she said while grabbing lunch at a Mexican restaurant in Phoenix after picking up family at the airport.
The 46-year-old office manager said, in her view, the counting is still going and the race isn’t over, and she questioned the election workers counting ballots.
“I mean, how much do we really know about the people who are taking our votes in and how trustworthy they really are?” she said.
Pro-Trump demonstrators gathered Saturday in Austin, outside the Texas Capitol. Kevin Rollins, 57, said Trump supporters “feel cheated” and will “be out here every Saturday until we get it resolved.”
Pennsylvania, one of the pivotal states that decided the election’s outcome, has drawn intense scrutiny from Trump supporters and allies, who have repeatedly questioned the vote-counting process this week in public statements and demonstrations outside a vote-counting site in Philadelphia.
On Thursday night, Philadelphia police arrested two armed men near where votes were being tallied. Larry Krasner, the Philadelphia district attorney, said police had been told the men were coming from Virginia for reasons potentially related to the vote count; authorities charged both men with weapons violations.
People who know the two men defended their actions, saying they went to the city to view the scene. Both had been associated with a group called “Vets for Trump,” and one worked in professional private security. The mother of one of the men said he “loved Trump very much” and “didn’t want Trump to lose.”
Just minutes after the election was called Saturday, Rudolph W. Giuliani, Trump’s personal attorney and the former mayor of New York mayor, said the Trump campaign would file a lawsuit alleging voter fraud in Pennsylvania.
Before Giuliani spoke at a Philadelphia landscaping company, Trump supporters had gathered outside the company’s gates to argue with Biden supporters. The Trump supporters learned that news outlets had projected Biden would win Pennsylvania and its 20 electoral votes from their phones and people in passing cars, one of whom shouted the outcome at them.
The confrontations were largely verbal, not physical – except for when Jada Carter, a 23-year-old recent Hofstra graduate, dropped to her hands and feet and twerked at a Trump supporter, laughing at him.
“If you don’t like it, you can leave!” she yelled.
Biden plans immediate flurry of executive orders to reverse Trump policies
InternationalNov 08. 2020Supporters wave to others driving past as they celebrate the victory of President-elect Joe Biden and Vice President-elect Kamala Harris in a parking lot near the Chase Center in Wilmington, Del., on Saturday. MUST CREDIT: Washington Post photo by Toni L. Sandys
By The Washington Post · Matt Viser, Seung Min Kim, Annie Linskey · NATIONAL, POLITICS President-elect Joe Biden is planning to quickly sign a series of executive orders after being sworn into office on Jan. 20, immediately forecasting that the country’s politics have shifted and that his presidency will be guided by radically different priorities.
He will rejoin the Paris climate accords, according to those close to his campaign and commitments he has made in recent months, and he will reverse President Donald Trump’s withdrawal from the World Health Organization. He will repeal the ban on immigration from many Muslim-majority countries, and he will reinstate the program allowing “dreamers,” who were brought to the United States illegally as children, to remain in the country, according to people familiar with his plans.
Although transitions of power can always include abrupt changes, the shift from Trump to Biden – from one president who sought to undermine established norms and institutions to another who has vowed to restore the established order – will be among the most startling in American history.
Biden’s top advisers have spent months quietly working on how best to implement his agenda, with hundreds of transition officials preparing to get to work inside various federal agencies. They have assembled a book filled with his campaign commitments to help guide their early decisions.
Biden is planning to set up a coronavirus task force on Monday, in recognition that the global pandemic will be the primary issue that he must confront. The task force, which could begin meeting within days, will be co-chaired by former surgeon general Vivek Murthy and David Kessler, a former Food and Drug Administration commissioner.
But there has also been a recognition of those around him that he may have to lean more on executive actions that he had once hoped. He can reorient various federal agencies and regulations, and he can adopt a different posture on the world stage.
But pushing major legislation through Congress could prove to be a challenge.
Although the Democrats will hold a narrowed majority in the House, the final makeup of the Senate is not yet clear. That will be decided on Jan. 5, with two runoff elections in Georgia. Democrats would need to win both races to effectively have control of the Senate – with Vice President Kamala Harris serving as the tie-breaking vote – while Republicans would retain a narrow advantage by winning at least one.
“The policy team, the transition policy teams, are focusing now very much on executive power,” said a Biden ally who has been in touch with his team who, like others interviewed for this story, spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss private conversations. “I expect that to be freely used in a Biden administration at this point, if the Senate becomes a roadblock.”
A Republican-held Senate – or even one with a narrow Democratic majority – probably will affect Biden’s Cabinet picks given the Senate’s power to confirm nominees.
One option being discussed is appointing Cabinet members in an acting capacity, a tactic that Trump also used.
“Just by virtue of the calendar and how many positions are filled, that’s always a possibility,” the person said. “Because the Senate moves so slowly now, so much more slowly than it used to.”
On Saturday afternoon, about two hours after networks called Biden the winner of the election, the president-elect had a brief call with House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., and Senate Minority Leader Charles Schumer, D-N.Y., who called to congratulate Biden on a “tremendous victory,” according to two Democratic officials.
Schumer called while en route to a celebration in Brooklyn, holding his flip phone out the window so that Biden could hear the cheering crowd.
If Sen. Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., stays as majority leader, he would be trying to manage a conference torn between two factions with different interests, but neither necessarily eager to help Biden – one with senators running for reelection in swing states in 2022, and another with those seeking the national spotlight as they vie for the 2024 Republican presidential nomination.
“In the old days, the mandate meant that the other side would be more amenable, or feeling they had an impetus to work,” said Sen. Robert Casey Jr., D-Pa. “I’m not sure that applies any longer.”
It is unclear whether Biden has communicated with McConnell yet directly; aides have not commented on any conversation.
A closely divided Congress could hamper Biden’s efforts to do sweeping legislative actions on immigration reform. He has also said he would send a bill to Congress repealing liability protections for gun manufacturers, and close background-check loopholes. He has pledged to repeal the Republican-passed tax cuts from 2017, an effort that could be stymied if Republicans hold the Senate majority.
Without congressional cooperation, however, Biden has said that he plans to immediately reverse Trump’s rollback of 100 public health and environmental rules that the Obama administration had in place.
He would also institute new ethics guidelines at the White House, and he has pledged to sign an executive order the first day in office saying that no member of his administration could influence any Justice Department investigations.
Biden has long pledged to rejoin the Paris climate accords by executive order, but he has also said that he would attempt to convince other nations to adopt higher standards in an attempt to curb the impacts of climate change.
Sen. Christopher Coons, D-Del., a longtime Biden ally who holds the seat Biden had for 36 years, offered a broad overview of Biden’s initial agenda: “Get us out of this pandemic that’s been made far worse by Trump’s bungled mishandling of it, rebuild our economy in a way that’s more sustainable and more inclusive, and deal with division and inequality.”
He noted that Biden’s style will be quite different, saying that Trump and Pelosi haven’t spoken in more than a year.
Coons suggested that Biden would promptly being reaching out to leaders in both parties.
The coronavirus response has been foremost on Biden’s mind, and it is seen inside his campaign as a chief reason for his victory. He has previously said that even before the inauguration he would reach out to Anthony Fauci, the country’s top infectious-disease expert, asking him for advice.
Biden also wants to quickly appoint a supply commander to oversee production and distribution of testing – and, when ready, vaccines – as well as materials such as masks and gowns.
The coronavirus – and Biden’s response to it – could also significantly impact the traditional spectacle that surrounds the transfer of power. Inaugural balls could be altered. And while Biden has previously said he wouldn’t envision wearing a mask while being sworn in, he has said they could try to limit the traditional throngs that fill the steps of the U.S. Capitol.
Much of Biden’s early agenda – including which pieces of legislation to prioritize – will be determined in the coming weeks as his transition team begins taking on a far more prominent role.
Biden’stransitioneffort is being overseen by Ted Kaufman, one of his closest advisers. Kaufman, who was appointed to replace Biden in the Senate when Biden became vice president in 2009, also helped co-write an update to the law governing the transition process, which was passed in 2015 and signed by President Barack Obama.
Biden’s transition team has been given government-issued computers and iPhones for conducting secure communications, and 10,000 square feet of office space in the Herbert C. Hoover Building in Washington, although most of the work is being done virtually because of the coronavirus pandemic. His advisers have been granted temporary security clearances and undergone FBI background checks to fast-track the processing of personnel who can receive briefings on intelligence.
But one important next step is for the head of the Government Services Administration to rule that the election results are final, enabling Biden’s transition team to expand its work and gain access to government funds. Biden officials are prepared for legal action if that administrator – Emily Murphy, a Trump political appointee – delays that decision, according to officials familiar with the matter.
Trump has so far not conceded defeat, falsely claiming Saturday that he won the election.
Pamela Pennington, a GSA spokeswoman, said that Murphy would ascertain “the apparent successful candidate once a winner is clear based on the process laid out in the Constitution.” Until that decision is made, she said, the Biden transition team would continue to receive limited access to government resources.
The transition from Trump to Biden would have few historic parallels, rivaled perhaps only by 1860-61, when southern states seceded before Abraham Lincoln took office, and 1932-33, when Herbert Hoover sought to undermine Franklin D. Roosevelt and prevent him from implementing his New Deal policies.
The last time there was a prolonged delay in a transfer of power was in 2000, when uncertainty over the results in the contest between then-Vice President Al Gore, a Democrat, and then-Texas Gov. George W. Bush, a Republican, stretched out until the Supreme Court ended a Florida recount that gave Bush the victory on Dec. 12.
The Bush administration’s sluggish start and lack of qualified personnel in place was cited by the 9/11 Commission Report as a critical vulnerability to U.S. national security for the attacks that occurred less than eight months after the inauguration. That prompted changes to the law and the granting of access at an earlier date following the political conventions.
“When George W. Bush left he made clear to his Cabinet that this is going to be the best transition of power that’s ever occurred. Because we weren’t treated very well when we came into power,” said Michael Leavitt, who at the time was the outgoing secretary of Health and Human Services. “Barack Obama to his credit said the same thing. There was a spirit of cooperation that went on and needs to continue. Whether it will or not I don’t know. But we’re better prepared.”
Chris Lu, the executive director of the Obama-Biden transition in 2008, said that within two hours of the election being called in 2008 he had a formal letter beginning the transition process.
“We literally at 9 a.m. the next morning walked into a transition office and had access to it,” he said. “It was the model for the smoothest transition of power.”
Making a clear break from the Trump administration’s adversarial posture toward the civil service is also a top priority for the Biden transition team.
The Trump administration’s suspicion of career officials and early calls for them to “get with the program” or “go” created tensions with incoming political appointees that never dissipated. Biden officials are hoping to create a positive atmosphere by avoiding some of the terminology and labels they think contributed to the mistrust.
The teams of campaign staffers and other aides that first embed themselves into government agencies after an election have historically been called “landing teams” and “beachhead teams,” summoning the memory of the storming of Normandy during World War II.
To avoid any associations with war, some Biden aides are sticking to soberingly bureaucratic terms, referring to landing teams as “ARTs” or Agency Review Teams, and beachhead team members as “temporary employees.”
So far, Trump administration officials have reviewed succession plans for department officials, planning for which civil servants would take on acting roles amid vacancies. Briefing materials are slated to be delivered over the next several days to Biden’s transition team.
Leavitt, who oversaw transition planning in 2012 for Republican nominee Mitt Romney and has worked with Kaufman to change the law governing presidential transitions, said there are a range of moves the Biden team could make even without cooperation from Trump’s campaign. Cabinet members and other top White House staff could be picked, and key priorities for the start of the administration could be lined up.
“The current moment always seems like it’s the extreme, and often they are. But we get through them. The country survives,” he said. “The internal strength of the United States allows us to get through these things.”
Impromptu celebrations pop up across Washington following Biden victory announcement
InternationalNov 08. 2020Revelers gather outside of the White House in Washington, after Joe Biden was projected to win Pennsylvania and become be the next president of the United States, MUST CREDIT: Photo for The Washington Post by Astrid Riecken
By The Washington Post · Marissa Lang, Joe Heim · NATIONAL, POLITICS
WASHINGTON – Horns blared, fireworks exploded and shouts of joy filled the air as supporters of Joe Biden and Kamala D. Harris spilled into the streets of Washington and its suburbs late Saturday morning to celebrate the breaking news that the pair had been projected to win the 2020 presidential election.
On a glorious fall day, it was news that the region, which voted overwhelmingly for Biden in the presidential contest, had been desperate to hear.
Around noon, an impromptu parade broke out on the streets of the nation’s capital to celebrate Biden’s victory. A brass band perched on the back of a truck played upbeat jazz as people spilled out of homes, shops and restaurants in downtown D.C. to join the march.
The crowd swelled quickly as the truck moved from the heart of Adams Morgan in the direction of the White House – first a dozen, then three dozen, and soon close to a hundred. A few policemen on motorcycles escorted the group as passing cars stopped to honk, their drivers cheering.
Celebrations erupted across the city. Cheers and clapping filled the air outside Eastern Market on Capitol Hill. A few blocks away near Third and Pennsylvania Avenue SE, “The Star Spangled Banner” blasted from speakers on a repeated loop.
A woman on a bicycle pedaled through Columbia Heights shouting, “it’s over!”
A man in Shaw stood on the curb with a stemmed glass of red wine, raising it to passersby.
“We won!” he shouted in Spanish. “We won!”
Fireworks exploded in bursts as neighbors emerged on porches with pots and pans to bang. Some simply stood there, raising their phones as if it were proof what they were seeing was real.
“The nightmare is over,” a man called to his neighbor, ambling out of a rowhouse just before noon.
On the city’s Columbia Heights neighborhood, Black, Hispanic and White residents honked their horns and cheered. People eating outdoors at restaurants pumped their fists and yelled in response.
Residents popped bottles of champagne on their front porches while Latin music – a mainstay in the neighborhood – blared in the background.
And in the middle of the cheers, an MPD police officer drove by and raised his fist out the window.
Outside the White House on Saturday afternoon, D.C. residents made themselves heard. Cars honked nonstop as drivers stuck their head out windows and waved Biden flags. Cyclists cheered as they sailed past, lifting fists in the air. Along 15th Street, where protesters had so many times marched against the outgoing president, a young Black woman stuck her head above the sunroof of her car, yelling: “FINALLY!”
In the leafy, quiet residential neighborhoods of upper Northwest Washington, where even the Halloween decorations featured Biden-Harris signs and “VOTE” themes, masked residents rushed to Connecticut Avenue to cheer, whoop and ring cowbells as cars and trucks drove by with signs hailing the election of the Democratic ticket.
Parents waved small American flags and held their children on their shoulders, and even a recycling truck blared its horn as scores of vehicles headed south on Connecticut Avenue toward the White House.
People flocked toward the White House on foot and by car, honking their horns, sticking solidarity fists out their windows and congratulating strangers on the street. They carried Biden-Harris signs, Black Lives Matter signs, American flags – the mood one of a party inside a sigh of relief.
The Trump hotel on Pennsylvania Avenue NW became a scene of beeping horns, middle finger waves and many expletive-laced goodbyes.
A car drove by with a poster-sized picture of Harris waving from the roof window. A biker shouted “Merry Christmas Donald Trump!”
Two runners stopped to pose in front of the hotel for a selfie.
“For the first time in four years, I feel like I have something to look forward to,” said Hannah, the runner in a Biden-Harris mask, who declined to give her last name because she works for a member of Congress.
“We’re going all the way to 1600!” her running partner said, before the two headed for the White House.
As Biden nears victory, world hopes for an end to American isolationism
InternationalNov 08. 2020Indian newspapers track the U.S. election. MUST CREDIT: Photo for The Washington Post by Joanna Slater
By The Washington Post · Shibani Mahtani, Miriam Berger · WORLD, POLITICS The world took its first steps from the Trump era to the presidency of Joe Biden on Saturday as he claimed victory in the presidential election. The focus among America’s friends and rivals around the world turned to predicting what a Biden administration would mean for their engagement with the United States.
U.S. allies and rivals looked ahead to a Biden presidency on Saturday as Biden crossed the 270-electoral vote threshold with a win in Pennsylvania. But the expected normal flood of congratulatory messages from world leaders might be muted by uncertainty over Donald Trump’s threats to challenge the outcome and the election process. Officials and media around the world lamented the polarization and dysfunction in one of the world’s oldest democracy. But shouts of “Biden” and cheers broke out in Berlin, London and other cities.
Many hope the period of American isolationism and country-first populism under President Trump will give way to an era of renewed U.S. global leadership and embrace of multilateralism to tackle common challenges.
“It’s good that there are finally clear numbers. We look forward to working with the next U.S. administration,” tweeted German Foreign Minister Heiko Maas. “We want to invest in cooperation for a transatlantic new beginning, a new deal.”
Frank Bainimarama, the prime minister of Fiji, was among the first to congratulate Biden outright even before the race was formally called, saying in a tweet that they must work together to confront a warming planet and rebuild the global economy.
“Now, more than ever, we need the USA at the helm of these multilateral efforts (and back in the #ParisAgreement – ASAP!),” he wrote.
Hours later, congratulations from world leaders and others – who were watching the vote count unfold – were finally uncorked as soon as U.S. media organizations declared Biden the winner. Leaders with diverse views and priorities – from Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and French President Emmanuel Macron to Zimbabwe’s President Emmerson Dambudzo Mnangagwa – were among the first to share their enthusiasm for working with Biden.
Though Trump has yet to concede, one of his key allies, British Prime Minister Boris Johnson, issued Biden his congratulations.
“While some of the processes are still playing out, it is now clear @JoeBiden has won,” tweeted British Foreign Minister Dominic Raab.
Nicola Sturgeon, the first minister of Scotland, hailed “President-Elect Joe Biden and the history-making Vice President-Elect Kamala D. Harris.”
“I want to congratulate the new President Elect of the USA @JoeBiden Joe Biden has been a true friend of this nation throughout his life and I look forward to working with him in the years ahead,” wrote Irish Prime Minister Micheál Martin in a nod to Biden’s Irish heritage.
“I heard a Pan-European sigh of relief, when Biden’s victory was called,” said a German member of European Parliament, Reinhard Bütikofer.
The editor of the conservative-leaning British newspaper the Evening Standard and former British Chancellor George Osbourne tweeted that “whether you’re on the left or right: moderation, integrity, seriousness and the mainstream are back.”
The news of Biden’s victory broke in Israel just as the Sabbath was lifting and crowds were gathering for what has become a weekly ritual: protesting against Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu outside of his Jerusalem residence. Some already carried signs reading ” Bibi you are next,” citing Netanyahu’s nickname.
Mehbooba Mufti, an opposition politician in India and former Minister of Jaamu and Kashmir, tweeted that “their win gives hope to rest of the world that right wing extremism & those who sow division & hatred will sooner or later be relegated to the pages of history like Donald Trump.”
Others continued to focus on the battered image of American democracy – sometimes with open glee.
The People’s Daily China, an official newspaper of the Central Committee of the Chinese Communist Party, pointed to Trump’s earlier comment that he had won with “HaHa” and a laughing emoji.
“Who’s the Banana Republic now?” Publimetro, a Colombian daily newspaper, asked on its front page.
While Trump clashed with many world leaders, he also cultivated close relationships with the populists and other allies in countries including Israel, India, and Hungary. Their leads had no immediate comment, though some opposition politicians were quick to reach out to Biden and Harris.
“It makes us proud that the first woman to serve as Vice President of the USA traces her roots to India,” tweeted India’s main opposition leader Rahul Gandhi.
“A White House without Trump should bring a less racist world,” tweeted Ahmad Tibi, an Arab member of the Israeli parliament. “
The Times of India, which anticipated Biden’s win with the headline “Bye Don, It’s Biden Finally,” said that H1-B work visas – allowing nonimmigrants to work in the United States – are unlikely to return in their previous scale or numbers, even if the Biden administration has a more favorable immigration policy. But it noted that the Democrats could be stronger on human rights violations in India. The newspaper also described celebrations in Harris’ ancestral village in southern India – the birthplace of her maternal grandfather – where residents were feeling festive ahead of the traditional Diwali celebrations.
In China, relations with the United States have plummeted to their lowest ebb in 40 years amid bitter disputes over trade, technology, human rights and the coronavirus pandemic. But hopes have been stirred that, despite fundamental differences, a Biden win might act as a circuit-breaker and offer a window for cooperation in certain areas.
From Beijing’s perspective, “a Biden presidency is more likely to put a floor under the current free-fall in relations, judging by his recent remarks on China and those of his foreign policy advisers,” wrote Wang Xiangwei, a columnist and editorial adviser at the Hong Kong-based South China Morning Post. Chinese officials, he said, are hoping for at least a short-term respite to the vitriol that has dominated Sino-U. S. relations under Trump.
Still, an op-ed in the nationalistic Global Times tabloid noted deep partisan divisions in the United States that it said would not be easily eased.
“The U.S. will remain united from outside but divided from within, no matter who is president,” wrote Zhang Jiadong, a professor at the Center for American Studies at Fudan University.
Iranian officials have largely avoided commenting on the election impasse and its possible implications for U.S. policies, such as the future of economic sanctions and the fate of the 2015 nuclear deal negotiated by the Obama-Biden administration. Trump withdrew from the pact two years ago and has stepped up sanctions on Tehran.
“For us, the individual and the party are not important; rather, what matters is the policies to be adopted by the U.S. government,” Iranian President Hassan Rouhani said Saturday. Rouhani has urged the U.S. to return to its commitments under the nuclear deal, known officially as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, and rejected Trump’ calls to renegotiate it.
The Chairman of Tehran’s City Council, Mohsen Hashemi Rafsanjani, on Saturday congratulated the family of Qasem Soleimani, the former commander of Iran’s elite Quds Force, who was killed in a U.S. military drone strike in January near Baghdad. Rafsanjani said the targeted killing helped cause “Trump’s heavy defeat,” BBC Persian reported.
Iranians, battered by an economic crisis alongside the coronavirus, have been following the election with intense scrutiny. Aftab-e Yazd, an Iranian reformist newspaper, declared on its Saturday front page: “A world without Trump.”
The global pandemic added urgency to Biden’s pledge to reverse Trump’s approach, which has left the United States estranged from the World Health Organization and facing the highest numbers of deaths and new cases at home.
After Trump withdrew from the World Health Organization – in protest of what he claim was a bias toward China – Biden this summer pledged to rejoin the U.N.’s health agency on his first day in office. Biden is a “globalist at heart,” wrote Natasha Kassam, a research fellow at Sydney’s Lowy Institute political think tank, in the Guardian.
“When it comes to global public health,” she added, “America has literally left the building.”
– – –
With Trump still seemingly determined to contest the election results in court, some expressed fears for what he might unleash, even if he eventually concedes.
“The squatter” was the title of the Saturday cover of Der Spiegel, a leading German news magazine. A defiant, fatigue-clad Trump is depicted holding a rifle, barricaded in the Oval Office with a bullet-holed picture of a smiling Biden in the backdrop.
In Britain, the Guardian declared Trump in a “fight against reality,” but noted in an editorial that Biden would have his work cut out to “rebuild the U.S. government’s credibility after Trumpism hollowed out its institutions.”
“He will have to reassert America’s role as the global problem-solver,” it said. “Under Mr. Trump the ‘indispensable nation’ disappeared when it was needed the most.”
Others mocked Trump’s efforts to remain in power. “One small hand clinging to everything except reality,” read the front page of the Saturday Paper in Australia.
The Japanese government, meanwhile, warned its nationals in the United States that they may become caught up in election-related violence, and told people to take precautions, including “considering whether it is appropriate to travel to work while protests continue,” according to the Mainichi newspaper.
The Trump brand continued to find support among those on the far right who support Trump’s nativist-driven populism. Nigel Farage, who leads the U.K.’s Brexit party, wrote in an opinion piece that he believed Trump is right to “keep up the fight,” and repeated the president’s untruths that widespread postal voting is problematic and open to fraud.
In Japan, a burger outlet near a U.S. naval base followed a long tradition of naming a burger after every sitting American president by adding the Biden Burger to its menu. The owner began serving the Trump burger four years ago and wanted to be ready for the impending result as the vote count nears a conclusion, according to public broadcaster NHK.
The Biden Burger pays homage to his Scranton, Pa., roots. It comes with Philadelphia-style cheese and potato chips to represent Pennsylvania, a major chip producer. The Trump Burger has a dash of jalapeño, “supposedly reflecting Trump’s sharp tongue,” NHK wrote.
Trump activists gather in state capitals to protest Biden victory
InternationalNov 08. 2020Protests continue during another night of a Stop the Vote for President Donald Trump rally outside at the Clark County Election Department in North Las Vegas, Nev., on Nov. 6, 2020. MUST CREDIT: Photo for The Washington Post by Mikayla Whitmore
By The Washington Post · Nick Miroff · NATIONAL, POLITICS Pro-Trump activists were gathering in state capitals on Saturday to rally in support of a baseless campaign called “Stop the Steal” that was kicked off Facebook this week for spreading misinformation and posts inciting violence.
The protests are among several efforts by President Donald Trump and his supporters to delegitimize the election results by claiming, without evidence, that ballot counts favorable to President-elect Joe Biden are the result of a sprawling, multistate conspiracy to hijack the vote through fraud.
The group’s flyers call for “peaceful protests” in 50 state capitals and key cities, such as Philadelphia and Las Vegas, where ballots continue to be counted. The presence of powerful weapons at the rallies has left law enforcement officials edgy and election workers fearful that they could be targeted or attacked.
The “Steal” calls have been amplified on social media by Donald Trump Jr. and promoted by conservative activists such as Amy Kremer, a former congressional candidate in Georgia and co-founder of the group Women for Trump. Earlier in the week, Kremer used a Facebook page with more than 100,000 followers called Women for America First to channel traffic to the “Stop the Steal” group, which quickly collected more than 360,000 members before it was shut down Thursday for violating the site’s rules.
Other right-wing activists close to former Trump adviser Stephen Bannon also are promoting the rallies. They include Jennifer Lawrence, a spokesperson for the “We Build the Wall” campaign that raised $25 million to build border barriers using private donations. Bannon and three others affiliated with that group were arrested in August for allegedly defrauding donors of more than $1 million.
The “Steal” campaign’s social media posts rely on familiar conservative tropes and paranoias. “Last chance Americans: Fight on your feet or die on your knees,” reads one post by a We Build the Wall activist, Dustin Stockton. “Are you in for the fight against the theft of our American election? Let’s do this.”
In a statement Thursday, Facebook spokesman Andy Stone said the “Stop the Steal” group’s page was removed because it “was organized around the delegitimization of the election process, and we saw worrying calls for violence from some members of the group.”
On Friday, a “Stop the Steal” rally in Pittsburgh drew a small number of Trump supporters, as well as counterprotesters, and riot police were called in to separate the two sides. Another rally in the state’s capital, Harrisburg, was attended by a few dozen protesters.
On Saturday, social media posts showed a few dozen people gathering in Detroit. A much larger crowd gathered midday outside the statehouse in Lansing, Mich., where Republican lawmakers were meeting in a rare Saturday hearing to investigate GOP claims of election fraud.
Michigan, which gave Trump a razor-thin victory in 2016, fell decisively to Biden this year, 50.5% to 47.9%.
After decades, Biden earns a long-sought title: President-elect
InternationalNov 08. 2020Joe Biden greets supporters on Jan. 18 as he arrives to speak during a campaign stop at Simpson College in Indianola, Iowa. MUST CREDIT: Washington Post photo by Jabin Botsford.
By The Washington Post · Matt Viser, Sean Sullivan · NATIONAL, POLITICS Joe Biden, the son of a car salesman and a homemaker, the product of Catholic schools and public universities, the six-term senator and two-term vice president, has craved one title above all others in decades of trying and decades of failing. On Saturday, he won it: president-elect.
The man who was wrong for the moment in two previous presidential campaigns had enough longevity to convince voters that he was right for this one. And now the man who was once one of the nation’s youngest senators will become the nation’s oldest president.
Joe Biden greets supporters at his childhood home in Scranton, Pa., on Tuesday. MUST CREDIT: Washington Post photo by Demetrius Freeman.
Draping himself and his campaign in basic attributes like decency and empathy to try to salve a country shattered by a viral pandemic and economic collapse, Biden used a deliberately laid-back approach to slay the reelection hopes of a man he believed threatened the fabric of American democracy.
The unassuming candidate campaigned as the opposite of President Donald Trump – a combustible political force who thrived on chaos and division, and prized belligerent machismo above all. Biden’s instinct was not to fight on Trump’s terms but to showcase a seemingly bygone era that favored bipartisanship, unity and a willingness to show emotion in public.
His campaign throughout the tumult visiting the nation was consistent, his closing argument to voters nearly identical to his opening pitch. Even under a months-long assault from Trump and his allies, Biden grew more popular among Americans as time wore on, instead of less.
Biden so far has received more than 74 million votes, breaking the record for the most ever received by a presidential candidate.
But the margins were not big enough for the swift results that his campaign had hoped for, leading to a drawn-out decision and failing to offer the wholesale denunciation of Trump that many Democrats had desired. Biden also proved unable to lift Senate candidates to victory, imperiling the party’s chances of winning the Senate majority.
Now that Biden has won, his calls for unity in a deeply polarized country, his reputation for bipartisanship in a closely divided Congress and his attempts to keep his own party from splintering will face a more urgent test than at any moment in his nearly half a century in politics.
“I will work as hard for those who didn’t vote for me as I will for those who did vote for me,” he said Tuesday afternoon in a speech that reached for patriotic solidarity.
Biden’s political arc is one with few parallels in American history. He won the presidency 12,205 days after announcing his first run, in 1987, when he was introduced as “a young fella.” He has managed to be both a politician well past his prime and a man who hung around just long enough to find his future.
“He’s like a battery that kept running when others were turned off or advanced to other places,” said Douglas Brinkley, a historian and author of numerous books on past presidents. “It’s the ‘Steady Eddie’ approach to politics. There’s just never been a moment where Biden wasn’t in the mix, for decades. . . . He’s a survivalist in American politics.”
The president who triumphed four years ago on an outsider’s promise to “drain the swamp” ultimately lost to a quintessential creature of Washington. Biden first won a Senate seat when Richard M. Nixon was president – and got a call from the president weeks later, the day after his wife and daughter were killed in a car accident. (“You have the great fortune of being young,” Nixon told Biden, in an awkward minute-long conversation.)
He saw six more presidents come and go before he departed in 2009 to serve as vice president to Barack Obama – and over his 36 years in the Senate, he served with more than 15 percent of all the senators in American history.
Yet through many of those years he made a point of commuting home on the train each night to Delaware, a habit that became an enduring part of his political identity – the Beltway insider, yes, but with an unshakable devotion to his family that would be tested again in this campaign.
His long tenure inside the corridors of power, not least his upcoming presidency, was hardly preordained. Biden’s stutter was supposed to make it difficult for him to deliver a good speech. His middling grades never set him on the path toward academic prowess. The tragedy that met him when his wife and daughter were killed and, decades later, the death of his elder son from cancer made him question his purpose – and his faith.
But he had a bundle of ambition underneath a toothy smile and affable “hey, buddy” demeanor. He was a county councilor by age 28, a senator by age 30 and discussed as a presidential contender shortly after he reached the eligible age of 35. Now, he will become president at age 78.
A nun once recalled a 7-year-old Biden writing a paper declaring he wanted to be president. Shortly after meeting his first wife, Neilia, at a beach in the Bahamas, he told her that he wanted to be president, her friends later recalled.
Yet, while he never lost a race in Delaware, he had failed on the national level.
Felled by accusations that he’d plagiarized other politicians’ speeches, Biden ended his campaign for the 1988 nomination in September of 1987.
“There’ll be other presidential campaigns,” Biden said as he left, flashing a wide grin before a cluster of microphones. “And I’ll be there.”
Two decades later, a second campaign never gained traction. He was, frustratingly for him, overshadowed by candidates reaching for history – Hillary Clinton attempting to become the first female president and Obama running to be the first African American. Biden’s bid, never crackling in the first place, fizzled out completely on a cold January night after he finished a distant fifth in the Iowa caucuses. In a final speech to supporters, he vowed, just as he had 20 years earlier, that the country hadn’t seen the last of him.
“Let me make something clear to you: I ain’t going away,” Biden said.
He would get another chance when his former foe, a one-term senator in need of a running mate with Senate connections, placed him on the 2008 ticket and ushered in two terms as vice president.
That, too, looked to be the end of his ambitions, when after son Beau Biden’s death in 2015, Biden decided against running in 2016.
But after Trump’s win, even as he began giving speeches and retreating to a more private life for the first time since his 20s, Biden again began mulling his political future.
In the months after Trump’s inauguration, he would invite people to his home to weigh his political options. In May 2017, just four months after Trump took office, Sen. Robert P. Casey Jr., D-Pa. was among those who came to talk with Biden and Steve Ricchetti, one of Biden’s closest confidants.
“He was clearly preparing,” Casey said.
Biden also campaigned for Democrats during the 2018 midterms and saw potential clues for a presidential bid. While a great deal of attention went to the wins by liberals like Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y., Biden spent much of his time campaigning for a broader swath of moderate Democrats who won in districts Trump carried in 2016.
Shortly after the midterms, Biden’s granddaughter Naomi utilized a Biden tradition that allows anyone to call a family meeting, bringing the grandchildren together to urge Pop to run.
But more than anything, according to those who spoke with him throughout the months before he got into the race, the chief motivation for Biden was Trump’s reluctance to offer a full-throated denunciation of white nationalism after the 2017 white-supremacist rally in Charlottesville.
“If there’s some parallel universe and Charlottesville never happened, I don’t know if Joe Biden runs,” said Greg Schultz, one of his senior advisers. “But after Charlottesville, 2020 became a possibility.”
Ted Kaufman, who has been with Biden since his 1972 campaign and filled his Senate seat when Biden became vice president, said Biden was deeply affected by the Charlottesville rally. “It was, ‘I know this is going to be hard, I know it’s going to be tough. But how can I not run? How will I feel if Donald Trump wins and I got the rest of my life thinking I could have beat him?’ “
Biden and his campaign aides met in the basement of a house he was renting in McLean, Va. – a Georgian-style home that, from the front, looked like a brick version of the White House – nearly two years ago to craft a campaign message that they rarely deviated from even amid frequent second-guessing from outside his close-knit circle.
They believed that Biden had one plausible path: to play to the center as the rest of the party moved further left, and to stay true to what he always was. He didn’t buy the advice from some in his frightened party that he respond to every Trump utterance or trolling. And he rarely bought into demands from some of the more-vocal liberal elements in his party.
“Joe Biden’s feeling was, ‘Whether people believe this unity message is right for the moment or not, it’s who I am,’ ” said Kate Bedingfield, a longtime adviser and deputy campaign manager. ” ‘It’s what I’ve always believed. I’m going to get in and run my race. And if it’s what the voters want, then I’ll be successful. And if it’s not, that’s OK, too.’ “
His campaign was far from risk-free. His party’s left wing, enraged by what it saw as dismissive treatment in 2016, was spoiling for a fight, and Biden was its antithesis. He carried significant baggage from a long career spent in the political center: He had touted how he worked with segregationist senators in the ’70s; he had pushed a crime bill in the ’90s that, while popular with Black politicians at the time, alienated rising Black voters, a politically potent party bloc. Some female Democrats recounted an uncomfortable familiarity on his part, for which he apologized. He was old, male and White in a party whose activists were increasingly young, female and diverse.
Those problems seemed to doom him in the first two voting states, with voters resoundingly rejecting him in Iowa and New Hampshire. The 18-day stretch between his New Hampshire drubbing and his South Carolina victory, however, bore witness to one of the biggest political comebacks in recent memory. He benefited from suburban women and Black voters, who sprang him out of South Carolina and into victories on Super Tuesday, and on toward the nomination.
“Trump has always been able to get people to play his game. And Joe Biden did not play his game,” said House Majority Whip Jim Clyburn, D-S.C., whose endorsement just before the South Carolina primary pushed the trajectory of the race toward Biden. “I just don’t see him being able to have gotten this far if he had tried to out-Trump Trump. You can’t out-Trump Trump.”
Biden also relied on voters focusing far more strongly on Trump, pushing the decision to be a referendum on his presidency. That became an even more urgent demand when the coronavirus began spreading late last winter, a scourge that so far has killed 236,000 Americans and foundered the economy. Biden had warned publicly of a pandemic, positioning himself as the opposite of a president who blustered that the virus would simply go away. He reinforced that position by constantly wearing a mask and practicing social distancing, even in dramatically curtailed campaign events.
“History has created his moment, which is the moment for someone stable, rational, caring, experienced,” said Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.), who has known Biden for decades. “You know, in other moments, those same qualities might have relegated him the eighth or ninth also-ran. But the combination of an earth-shattering pandemic and an unhinged commander in chief has created a really strong appetite for comfort food. . . . It’s nutritious, it’s affordable, and has deep roots in our psyche. And we prefer it.”
– – –
Throughout much of his career, and particularly during the early presidential primaries this year, Biden’s campaign felt that his political acumen and broad-based appeal were too often overlooked. But he was deft in navigating party divisions and potential political perils such as demands to support defunding the police or adding more justices to the Supreme Court, and in dampening Trump’s advantages on the economy.
“Everybody talks about how Biden ended up being unexpectedly the best candidate for this moment in history,” said Anita Dunn, one of his top advisers. “He still is undervalued and underestimated, both in terms of his political instincts and also his governing instincts. His understanding of what being president means, and how to be president, is a huge part of the advantage he had from the day he got in this race.”
Biden’s personal attributes also stood out in comparison with an incumbent bent on division and insult. Throughout his career, Biden has interacted with legions of average Americans, with exchanges meant to be brief often taking much longer as he tested the stamina of much younger aides on the rope line. He has taken phone numbers of people in grief and cancer patients – as recently as Election Day – and followed up to check on their welfare. He’s invited stutterers to review his speech-writing process, sharing how he marks up the text so he can avoid tripping on words.
When Sen. Amy Klobuchar, D-Minn., delivered her first Senate floor speech to an empty chamber, her cellphone rang. It was Biden, extolling: “Great speech, kid!”
“Joe Biden has always shown random acts of kindness, almost every day, to people. That’s what he’s like,” she said. “People can say he’s going to be more boring than Donald Trump. Oh please, let that be true. I just think people have had it with all this drama.”
His personal touch has had a lasting effect on supporters like Christine Hunsinger, who was a 15-year-old high school student who volunteered for Biden in Manchester, N.H., when he first ran for president in 1987. She saw a grayer candidate two decades later, and has been anxious this time until recently, when she began to feel like, finally, Biden’s time had arrived.
“He is the person for this moment, and I can’t think of anybody else who is the right person for this moment,” said Hunsinger, who spent the past several days glued to her TV in Cranston, R.I., excited, anxious and eager for the election to be called for Biden.
In recent weeks, the weight of the moment has come over Biden, as he has reflected on the long arc of his career.
He stopped at his son’s grave in Wilmington, Del., and visited his childhood home in Scranton, Pa., on Tuesday morning, writing on a living room wall, “From this house to the White House with the grace of God. Joe Biden 11-3-2020.”
And he has engaged in a bit of gallows humor with advisers, recounting an old joke he and Obama shared as they confronted the depths of the financial collapse near the end of the 2008 campaign: “Is it too late to get out of this thing?”
The first chapter of Biden’s political career began with tragedy; after the deaths of his wife and daughter, he was sworn into office at the hospital bedside of his two surviving sons, Beau and Hunter. The last chapter will begin without a key character.
While much attention has gone toward Hunter – with Trump’s campaign pointing toward some of his foreign business dealings – it’s been Beau who has been a guiding light for his father.
On his left wrist, Biden wears the rosary Beau had when he died. He mentioned his late son at almost every stop. The fact that Sen. Kamala D. Harris (D-Calif.) had been a good friend of Beau’s – they served together as state attorneys general – helped ease her selection as Biden’s running mate.
During a campaign event last month, Biden drew a direct line from the end of Beau’s life to his decision to run for president. During one visit, Biden recalled in a solemn tone, Beau asked his wife to put their children to bed so he could speak to his father at the kitchen table.
“He said, ‘Dad, look at me,’ ” Biden recalled. “I said, ‘I’m looking at you, honey.’ “
“He said, ‘Dad, promise me.’ He said, ‘I’m going to be okay no matter what happens. I’m going to be OK. Promise me, Dad, promise me you’ll be okay,’ ” Biden said.
His son’s message, Biden said, was that he not step away from public life.
President Moon Jae-in (Yonhap) 
In Atlanta, 16-year-old Chandler Crump speaks at a pro-Trump event at the Georgia Capitol in Atlanta on Saturday. MUST CREDIT: Photo by Kevin D. Liles for The Washington Post 
Supporters wave to others driving past as they celebrate the victory of President-elect Joe Biden and Vice President-elect Kamala Harris in a parking lot near the Chase Center in Wilmington, Del., on Saturday. MUST CREDIT: Washington Post photo by Toni L. Sandys 
Revelers gather outside of the White House in Washington, after Joe Biden was projected to win Pennsylvania and become be the next president of the United States, MUST CREDIT: Photo for The Washington Post by Astrid Riecken 
Indian newspapers track the U.S. election. MUST CREDIT: Photo for The Washington Post by Joanna Slater 
Protests continue during another night of a Stop the Vote for President Donald Trump rally outside at the Clark County Election Department in North Las Vegas, Nev., on Nov. 6, 2020. MUST CREDIT: Photo for The Washington Post by Mikayla Whitmore 
Joe Biden greets supporters on Jan. 18 as he arrives to speak during a campaign stop at Simpson College in Indianola, Iowa. MUST CREDIT: Washington Post photo by Jabin Botsford. 
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