America, I’m honored that you have chosen me to lead our great country.The work ahead of us will be hard, but I promise you this: I will be a President for all Americans — whether you voted for me or not.I will keep the faith that you have placed in me. pic.twitter.com/moA9qhmjn8— Joe Biden (@JoeBiden) November 7, 2020
By The Washington Post · Toluse Olorunnipa, Annie Linskey, Philip Rucker · NATIONAL, POLITICS Joseph Robinette Biden Jr. was elected the nation’s 46th president Saturday in a repudiation of President Donald Trump powered by legions of women and minority voters who rejected his handling of the coronavirus pandemic and his divisive, bullying conduct in office.
Biden’s victory was the culmination of four years of struggle for Democrats and others who have resisted Trump. It was celebrated by an emotional outpouring in cities coast to coast that ended with a tailgate-style victory party in Biden’s hometown of Wilmington, Del. The election took four days to be resolved after the former vice president was projected to win a series of battleground states, and was clinched by the state where he was born, Pennsylvania.
Voters also made history in electing as vice president Kamala Devi Harris, 56, a senator from California and daughter of Jamaican and Indian immigrants who will become the country’s first woman, first Black person and first Asian American to hold the No. 2 job.
Trump, who was at his Virginia golf course when Biden was declared the winner, did not concede.
In a prime-time speech to flag-waiving supporters outside the Chase Center in Wilmington, Biden made no mention of Trump’s intransigence, instead offering an olive branch to the president’s supporters and imploring all Americans to “put away the harsh rhetoric,” and end “this grim era of demonization.”
“To make progress, we must stop treating our opponents as our enemy,” Biden said, before referring to the Book of Ecclesiastes. “The Bible tells us that to everything there is a season – a time to build, a time to reap, a time to sow. And a time to heal. This is the time to heal in America.”
Before introducing Biden, Harris acknowledged the history-making reality of her election, saying she stood on the shoulders of trailblazing women and would do her best to join their ranks.
“While I may be the first woman in this office, I will not be the last,” Harris, wearing all white, said to raucous applause. “Because every little girl watching tonight sees that this is a country of possibilities.”
She described Biden as a “healer” and a “tested and steady hand” ready to help shepherd the country through multiple crises.
News of Biden’s victory – and Trump’s defeat – sent thousands of people into the streets for impromptu celebrations in cities including Philadelphia, Atlanta, New York and Washington. The events mirrored some of the mass demonstrations that have taken place across America in the past four years, as diverse groups have protested gun violence, sexual assault, systemic racism, police brutality and Trump’s presidency.
But the joyous outbursts came against a dark backdrop: a bitter and closer-than-expected election that revealed the nation’s deep fissures, and the precedent-shattering attempts by an incumbent president to defy its results.
Trump on Saturday continued to make baseless claims that the election was rigged, assertions that have been echoed by his loyal supporters.
“I WON THE ELECTION, GOT 71,000,000 LEGAL VOTES,” Trump tweeted Saturday afternoon, despite the reality that he was losing the popular vote for a second time and at risk of facing a 306-to-232 electoral college drubbing.
Trump’s allies encouraged his supporters to prepare to protest in the streets, and most Republican leaders remained silent rather than publicly acknowledging the outcome of a free and fair election resulting in their standard-bearer’s defeat.
In a statement shortly after the race was called, Trump defiantly claimed that “this race is far from over” and pledged to challenge the result in the courts until “the rightful winner is seated.”
Biden won three swing states that Trump had claimed in 2016 – Michigan, Wisconsin and Pennsylvania – reconstituting the “blue wall” that had protected previous Democratic nominees. He was projected the winner in Nevada on Saturday, completing his successful defense of all states won by Hillary Clinton in 2016. He also was leading in the formerly Republican terrain of Arizona and Georgia as he boosted Democratic votes across the Sun Belt. By early Saturday, Biden had amassed a record 74.6 million votes, beating Trump by more than 4 million, a margin that was expected to increase once all ballots were certified.
By denying Trump a second term, a country convulsed by health, economic and social crises brought to an end a tumultuous presidency that polarized the nation and was characterized by attacks on undocumented immigrants, political adversaries and, at times, the rule of law.
On Saturday, Biden presented a starkly different vision for governing and vowed to be a president for all Americans, not just those who elected him.
“For all those of you who voted for President Trump, I understand the disappointment tonight,” he said in his only mention of the incumbent. “I’ve lost a couple times, myself. But now, let’s give each other a chance.”
Trump, meanwhile, continued to vent his frustration on Twitter and in a defiant speech from the White House on Thursday night. He and his aides alternately demanded that vote-counting end or continue as they searched for dwindling opportunities for a path to 270 electoral votes. They filed multiple legal challenges over the election in several states.
Voters punctuated the extraordinarily ugly and disruptive campaign season by choosing as Trump’s successor his antithesis – a career Democratic politician who offered himself as a healer with the compassion and empathy he said was needed to usher in an era of civility and restore the soul of America. He won the presidency on the 48th anniversary of his first election to the Senate, on Nov. 7, 1972.
Biden, who will be 78 when he is sworn in Jan. 20, will become the nation’s oldest president and will arrive with nearly a half-century in elected office, including eight years as vice president and 36 years representing Delaware in the Senate. He is also the second Catholic and first Delawarean to be elected president.
He used his remarks Saturday to cite a popular Catholic hymn, “On Eagles’ Wings,” offering it as a source of solace to those who have lost loved ones to the coronavirus crisis.
Biden said controlling the pandemic would be his first order of business, and announced plans to name a group of scientists and experts to create a plan of action for implementation beginning Jan. 20.
“I will spare no effort – none, or any commitment – to turn around this pandemic,” he said.
Harris’s ascent to one of the nation’s two highest offices marked a particularly momentous occasion in the history of women’s rights and came a century after the 19th Amendment guaranteed all women the right to vote. It also occurred four years after Clinton, the first female presidential nominee of a major political party, lost unexpectedly to Trump.
Since then, a record number of women have been elected to offices across the country, amid the tenure of a president who has insulted women, demeaned their looks and belittled the #MeToo movement against sexual assault.
Biden’s win was powered by a record number of votes by women, with Black women providing an especially large boost, according to preliminary exit polls. More than 90 percent of Black women supported the Biden-Harris ticket, making for the widest margin in any voting bloc in the country.
Harris, who attended Howard University in Washington, is also the first graduate of a historically Black university to be elected to serve in the White House.
While Biden’s path to victory became clearer Wednesday after he secured wins in key battleground states, the apparently narrow margins in several states left the outcome in doubt for days. During that period, Trump sought to shift the race to the courts by alleging fraud but providing no evidence.
Trump has previously declined multiple opportunities to commit to a peaceful transition of power, saying he reserved the right to object to what he has defined as fraud despite the lack of evidence.
Despite Trump’s unprecedented effort to use the vast platform of the presidency to cast doubt on the legitimacy of an American election, the traditional markers of a coming transfer of power began to emerge shortly after Biden was declared the winner.
Former presidents and presidential candidates released statements congratulating the new president-elect; world leaders reached out to express optimism about developing a working relationship; Democratic congressional leaders expressed their support; and, despite pressure from some of Trump’s allies not to legitimize the results, some Republicans also publicly sent their well wishes to the soon-to-be Biden-Harris administration.
“Our democracy needs all of us more than ever,” former president Barack Obama said in a statement offering well wishes on behalf of himself and his wife, Michelle Obama. “Michelle and I look forward to supporting our next President and First Lady however we can.”
Among the Republicans sending statements of support were former Florida governor Jeb Bush, Maryland Gov. Larry Hogan and Sen. Mitt Romney of Utah, the 2012 GOP presidential nominee.
Among the world leaders who swiftly and publicly congratulated Biden on Saturday were British Prime Minister Boris Johnson, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky and Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau.
“The US is our most important ally and I look forward to working closely together on our shared priorities, from climate change to trade and security,” Johnson said in a statement released on Twitter.
Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi offered “heartiest congratulations” to Harris, whose mother immigrated to the United States from India, for inspiring “immense pride” for Indian Americans.
Throughout the campaign, Biden pitched himself to voters as a uniter who would restore the nation’s governing norms, respect long-standing institutions and reconnect relationships with international allies that have frayed as Trump embraced autocrats and brushed aside leaders of other democracies.
Unlike in his two other attempts at the White House, in the 1988 and 2008 contests, Biden entered the race at the top of the polls. He crafted a decidedly centrist pitch as many other candidates vied for attention from the energized liberal wing of the Democratic Party.
But his candidacy struggled in the early contests. He placed a dismal fourth in Iowa, then sank to fifth in New Hampshire.
Biden’s chances brightened in Nevada, where he was powered by a more diverse electorate. And then the race moved onto turf far more agreeable to a man who had long worked with Black elected officials and served the first African American president – South Carolina, and its predominantly Black Democratic electorate.
Boosted by support from Rep. James Clyburn, an influential Black Democrat in the state, he rallied to an easy victory, and he replicated it in a host of states over the next few weeks to effectively clinch the nomination just as the nation closed down under the explosion of the coronavirus.
Even in the general election, the campaign tried to maintain a low profile, with Biden avoiding showmanship and making a point to elevate others in the party.
He focused insistently on the coronavirus, keeping a card with an updated death count with him at all times and deploying his own personal story of loss to convey a sense of empathy that he said the president lacked. He hoped that his experience with the death of his first wife and their daughter in a 1972 car accident and the 2015 death from cancer of his son Beau would help him connect with a country in mourning.
Biden’s campaign also reflected his desire to model the guidance of public health officials in minimizing the spread of a virus that has killed more than 237,000 Americans. He wore a mask at all public appearances, at times for entire speeches, unless he was yards from anyone else, and urged Americans to follow suit. Even as the president resurrected mass gatherings, filled with maskless supporters who refused to socially distance, Biden held no large rallies, instead speaking before parking lots full of cars as supporters honked in agreement.
Clinching the nomination early offered advantages, affording Biden time to unite the Democratic Party. He rolled out back-to-back-to-back virtual endorsements by former rivals in which they would appear together on video, events that fostered a sense of Democratic bonhomie after a bruising primary.He worked with Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) and his supporters to develop policies, effectively muting the criticism from the left that had hounded Clinton.
Trump used the cooperation as an attack line, saying the “manifesto” that the two wings of the party developed showed that Biden was controlled by the left. To respond, Biden would point to his long record as a moderate. “The party is me. Right now, I am the Democratic Party,” Biden snapped to Trump as the president made a case that the Democratic Party is controlled by its liberal base.
The GOP also tried to weaponize Biden’s authorship of the 1994 crime bill, which critics say led to mass incarceration. Biden never apologized for his role in shepherding the legislation, which also included a 10-year ban on assault weapons. Although the Republican effort appeared to have nominally boosted Trump’s support among Black men, Biden retained the overwhelming backing of non-White voting groups.
Biden’s ascent to the White House reflects a decades-long quest for the presidency and a remarkable rise from his roots in Scranton, Pa., a childhood he often references in his speeches.
His family moved to Delaware when he was a boy, but Biden maintained his ties to his native town. On Election Day, he made a campaign stop at his former home and wrote a note on the living room wall. “From this house to the White House with the grace of God,” Biden wrote.
His first White House campaign ended in 1987 when he bowed out after being accused of plagiarizing. His second, in 2008, ended after a bad showing in Iowa but put him on the path to becoming vice president.
But Biden situated himself as an institutionalist and creature of the Senate, where he served for six terms. He chaired the Senate Foreign Relations and Judiciary committees, overseeing the hot-button Supreme Court confirmation hearings of Robert Bork and Clarence Thomas. His regrets over how Anita Hill was treated as a witness during the latter hearings led him to push to add women to the Judiciary Committee and ultimately to elevate Harris as his vice-presidential pick.
Trump, the third president in American history to be impeached, is set to leave office with a tenuous legacy and a long string of unfulfilled promises. His final months in office aren’t likely to change that, with the country beset by a surging public health crisis.
His loss all but ensures that he will be the first president since Herbert Hoover to leave office with fewer Americans employed than when he was sworn in. The 6.9 percent unemployment rate in October, while down from the pandemic high of more than 14 percent, is still significantly above the 4.7 percent rate when he took over in January 2017.
The national debt has soared, thousands of troops remain in overseas war zones and the kind of Washington influence-peddling Trump calls “the swamp” has only increased under his watch. Trade deficits persist, and the fence project on the border with Mexico has been neither completed nor, as Trump promised, financed by the Mexican government.
The president’s decision to sign hundreds of executive orders and bypass Congress rather than securing policy changes via legislation means that much of his legacy can easily be overturned. Yet while Biden campaigned on a promise to roll back Trump’s signature legislative victory – a tax cut passed in 2017 – he may not be able to do so if Republicans maintain their Senate majority.
Still, Trump’s term in office will be recorded in history books as turbulent, norm-shattering and consequential on numerous fronts. He was impeached by the House last year for alleged abuse of power and obstruction of Congress after he encouraged Ukraine’s president to investigate Biden and his son Hunter. He was ultimately acquitted by the Senate.
He has cemented his impact on the federal judiciary, appointing more than 200 judges and three Supreme Court justices. Their impact on American life will extend long past Trump’s term.
When Biden is sworn in, he will have an opportunity to leave his own stamp on a country he has served in public office for the vast majority of his adult life.
“I’ve long talked about the battle for the soul of America. We must restore the soul of America,” he said Saturday. “Our nation is shaped by the constant battle between our better angels and our darkest impulses. And what presidents say in this battle matters. It is time for our better angels to prevail.”
Notwithstanding the second wave of Covid-19 infections, Myanmar is going ahead with its General Election on November 8.
This will be the second election in the post-military era, and it will mark a significant historical event in the country’s recent democratic transformation. While the incumbent National League for Democracy (NLD) is expected to win most of the 424 elected seats, ethnic parties in the states—the provinces of ethnic nationalities—may see better results than in 2015. Unlike 2015, there are some new political parties, which are less aligned with either the military-backed Union Solidary and Development Party (USDP) or the NLD.
Although the electoral outcome is unpredictable, the result is not likely to make a significant difference to current democratisation challenges, which require strengthening civil society to improve institutional and governance systems. The current restricted environment for civil society organisations, especially those advocating for the expansion of human rights and accountability, is almost certain to continue in post-2020 Myanmar. There is a lot of stake for the democratisation of Myanmar and its fragile reform for a more inclusive society.
There are three possible electoral outcomes, and each will shape Myanmar’s legislative agenda differently. Most importantly, the outcome will decide who will be the next president and who will control the administration until February 2026.
In the first possible outcome, the incumbent NLD administration will return with a reduced majority, riding on the national popularity of its leader Aung San Suu Kyi and its dominant online presence to overcome Covid-related campaign restrictions.
The second possible outcome would see the military-backed USDP win by gaining at least 25 percent of elected seats and combining this with the 220 military-reserved seats to control the Union legislature.
In the third possible outcome, the minority nationalities will hold the balance of power in the national legislatures to assert influence over the election of the future president. However, with the recent cancellation of the elections in constituencies from mostly nationality-dominated areas, this outcome seems unlikely.
The unique nature of Myanmar’s political system under the 2008 Constitution means the parliamentary election results have limited influence on future political constellations. Apart from their legislative functions, members of parliament have limited scrutiny on the executive government. While the parliament will elect the president and the vice presidents and confirm the president-nominated judicial and ministerial positions, Myanmar’s parliament operates as a check and balance to the executive. Partly due to its restricted powers within the scope of the 2008 Constitution, but mostly due to party discipline of restraint in making critical comments against their leaders, the current, NLD-dominated parliament has been criticised for not fulfilling its potential to be a public forum to check the NLD-led government’s decisions, especially in protecting the broader rights of the people and ensuring democratic spaces.
In addition to the NLD’s inability to progress key national reform agenda such as peace and constitutional reforms, the erosion of freedom of expression and the failure of local administration changes generated a range of tensions and fragmentation within the civil society over the last five years. In addition, both print media and social media in Myanmar have come under increasing scrutiny that has contributed to self-censorship and silences. Unlike in 2015, there is little expectation that the outcome of this election will offer significant structural changes to address these concerns.
There has been a lot of expectation that civil society organisations (CSOs) could play a positive role in monitoring Myanmar’s elections to ensure the effectiveness and integrity of the democratic process in Myanmar. The local CSOs are also expected to play a significant role in the forthcoming election by conducting observation and public education. There was a highly-celebrated, active and widespread engagement of both local and international CSOs supporting the 2015 election. However, recent political developments indicate their engagement in the 2020 election is likely to be quite restricted. Moreover, space for the CSOs to contribute to political and policy reforms after the election is unlikely to be significantly reduced.
The recent example of the People’s Alliance for Credible Elections (PACE) and the controversial decisions of the Union Election Commission (UEC) demonstrate the current predicament faced by CSOs that are focused on policy or political reforms. PACE is a prominent local group almost exclusively focused on electoral issues. It provided the largest numbers of electoral observers in the 2015 General Election, and both by-elections in 2017 and 2018. Despite its prominent previous involvements in ensuring the integrity of the electoral process, in July 2020, the UEC decided not to give accreditation to PACE for the 2020 Election, citing the lack of association registration and foreign funding. It is worth noting that neither conditions are illegal under the current Association Law. The UEC reversed its decision in a few weeks later, caving to intense public pressure, to allow PACE as one of the local organisations accredited as election observers.
The strange case of the PACE Accreditation echoes the difficulties faced by Myanmar’s CSOs in their endeavours to promote public policies under the NLD-led administration. A general view on this restricted political landscape is that the current government is unnecessarily bureaucratic and only follows the letter of the law in public policy processes. A more pessimistic view, as expressed privately among some local leaders, suggests two key elements of the NLD’s failure of leadership.
The first element entails the government’s desire to reign in the myriad of CSOs, especially those attracting lucrative international funding. It is probably understandable for a legitimate government to establish a justifiable framework to strengthen accountability, sustainability and probity within the sector. The 2014 Association Law stipulates only a voluntary registration and there is no overarching framework concerning CSOs to guide such a systematic CSO reform. Without a comprehensive approach to strengthening the CSO sector, the NLD-led or NLD-appointed authorities have used a seemingly overzealous legalistic style to deter broader democratic reforms.
The second element of this failure relates to the NLD’s perspective on CSOs’ policy criticisms as the political opposition to the government. With an almost dogmatic conviction on the infallibility of its leader, many in the NLD are intolerant to any critical comments. Despite many CSO leaders being former allies in the struggle against the military rule, there is little or no space for policy dialogues or engagement with them. In contrast to the last quasi-military government, which openly accommodated their inputs in policy workshops and reform dialogues, the CSOs have become frustrated with the NLD members with the lack of engagement in policy discussions. This antagonism has led to some student unionists agitating for an election boycott in 2020, partly as an objection to the popularly elected government.
There is no sign of an improved relationship between the broader CSO community and the NLD-led administration in the near future. More importantly, it is unlikely that a returned NLD administration will change its approach to the CSOs. Taking a cue from the current CSO-NLD relationship, it is also unlikely that, in the event of the second possible election outcome, a USDP-Military administration would consider the CSOs as friends, especially concerning human rights-related issues.
In the third possible outcome, in which ethnic nationalities hold the balance of power in the legislature, heated contestations between the military, administrative and legislative institutions could take place. Such an unstable environment might result in politicisation among CSOs, rather than strengthening the sector.
The 2020 General Election should be a critical time to consolidate democratisation, especially in relation to resetting the relationship between CSOs and the political authorities. However, their recent experience in advocacy for political and policy reform under the NLD government and the potential election outcomes indicates such collaboration is not likely to occur or even guarantee the current level of freedom enjoyed by the service-oriented CSOs. There is a need to find another opportunity in the post-2020 elections to re-establish democratic alliance between political forces and CSOs.
รัฐบาลญี่ปุ่นตัดสินใจลดการจ่ายโบนัสให้ข้าราชการในปี63 เพื่อลดช่องว่างรายได้กับพนักงานเอกชนที่เจอผลกระทบจากพิษโควิด
กมลา แฮร์ริส รองประธานาธิบดีหญิงสหรัฐคนใหม่ผู้เปลี่ยนหน้าประวัติศาสตร์การเมืองกว่า 200 ปีของสหรัฐไปโดยสิ้นเชิง 
เปิดประวัติโจ ไบเดน ว่าที่ประธานาธิบดีคนล่าสุดของสหรัฐอเมริกา
หนุ่มจากเมืองลอสแองเจลิสขู่จะก่อเหตุกราดยิงหาก โจ ไบเดน ชนะการเลือกตั้งผู้นำสหรัฐ
ไบเดน-แฮร์ริส แถลงขอบคุณประชาชนที่เชื่อมั่น พร้อมทำงานฐานะผู้นำประเทศ
ทรัมป์แถลงหลังทราบผลเลือกตั้ง ย้ำไม่โปร่งใส ขณะเจ้าหน้าที่ยืนยันไม่เห็นความผิดปกติ
ไบเดนทวีตขอบคุณชาวอเมริกันหลังชนะในรัฐเพนซิลเวเนียเตรียมขึ้นแท่นประธานาธิบดีคนที่ 46
โจ ไบเดนเอาชนะโดนัลด์ ทรัมป์ คว้า 290 คะแนน พร้อมขึ้นเป็นประธานาธิบดีคนใหม่
