Under The Angsana Tree: Joe Biden wins the 2020 US presidential election

Biden beats Trump to be next US President, says time for America to unite
Democrat Joe Biden is to be elected 46th President of the United States after winning Pennsylvania on Nov 7, 2020.PHOTO: AF

Democratic candidate Joe Biden has been elected as the next President of the United States, according to calls from US media outlets on Saturday (Nov 7).

He was projected the winner of the presidential election after he was declared the winner of the battleground states of Pennsylvania and Nevada, netting him 20 and 6 electoral votes respectively, bringing his total to 279 - more than the 270 needed to win the White House.

California senator Kamala Harris will be the next Vice-President, making history as the first Black woman and the first person of South Asian descent to hold the nation’s second-highest office.

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Joe Biden defeats Donald Trump to become the 46th President of the United States

Joe Biden speaks during a drive-in rally at Heinz Field on November 2, 2020, in Pittsburgh. Image source: AP Photo/Andrew Harnik

The voters have spoken, and the Trump era has come to an end. For now, at least — but more on that in a bit. After days of counting, with the coronavirus pandemic spurring voters to cast their ballots early and by mail in record numbers this year, the election is now being called by multiple news organizations. Former Vice President Joe Biden is now projected by multiple outlets including CNN, NBC, and the AP to be the winner of the 2020 race for the White House, making him the 46th president of the United States. It was, as expected, an intense, closely fought contest.

It was also unprecedented for having been conducted amid the once-in-a-century pandemic that has roiled the country. And in keeping with the race’s dramatic nature, the whole week has been dominated by tense, incremental developments as individual states’ electoral votes have slowly been added to Biden’s count.

President-elect Biden is expected to address the nation this evening along with Vice President-elect Kamala Harris, who will become the first black, Asian, and female Vice President ever.

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Kamala Harris Makes History as First Woman and Woman of Color as Vice President

Ms. Harris being sworn in as San Francisco’s district attorney in 2004 with her mother by her side.Credit...George Nikitin/Associated Press

Ms. Harris, the daughter of an Indian mother and Jamaican father, has risen higher in the country’s leadership than any woman ever before her.

From the earliest days of her childhood, Kamala Harris was taught that the road to racial justice was long. She spoke often on the campaign trail of those who had come before her, of her parents, immigrants drawn to the civil rights struggle in the United States — and of the ancestors who had paved the way.

As she took the stage in Texas shortly before the election, Ms. Harris spoke of being singular in her role but not solitary. “Yes, sister, sometimes we may be the only one that looks like us walking in that room,” she told a largely Black audience in Fort Worth. “But the thing we all know is we never walk in those rooms alone — we are all in that room together.”

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'I won't be the last': Kamala Harris, first woman elected US vice-president, accepts place in history

‘A moment all her own’: Kamala Harris gives an acceptance speech in Delaware. Photograph: Drew Angerer/Getty Images

Kamala Harris accepted her place in history on Saturday night with a speech honoring the women who she said “paved the way for this moment tonight”, when the daughter of Jamaican and Indian immigrants would stand before the nation as the vice-president-elect of the United States.

With her ascension to the nation’s second highest office, Harris, 56, will become the first woman and the first woman of color to be elected vice president, a reality that shaped her speech and brought tears to the eyes of many women and girls watching from the hoods of their cars that had gathered in the parking lot of a convention center in Wilmington, Delaware.

Wearing an all-white pantsuit, in an apparent tribute to the suffragists who fought for a woman’s right to vote, Harris smiled, exultant, as she waved from the podium waiting for the blare of car horns and cheers to subside. Joe Biden, the president-elect, would speak next. But this was a moment all her own. She began her remarks with a tribute to the legacy of the late congressman and civil rights activist John Lewis.

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Can Biden and Harris put a bitterly divided America back together again?

They may have defeated Trump, but the new administration faces an electorate churning with expectation and resentment

The end of the Trump era will in theory look like this. At midday on Wednesday 21 January, Joe Biden will stand on the west front of the United States Capitol, place his left hand on a Bible, raise his right and utter 35 words: “I do solemnly swear that I will faithfully execute the office of president of the United States, and will to the best of my ability, preserve, protect and defend the constitution of the United States.”

With that oath of office Biden will become the 46th president and power will drain from his predecessor, who will become a common citizen, an ex-president, number 45, no longer commander-in-chief, head of state or Oval Office occupier. The moment will thrum with pomp and pageantry. There will be drums, a bugle, the Hail to the Chief anthem and a 21-gun salute. A polished choreography, originating from George Washington’s inauguration in 1789, to symbolise the continuity of democratic rule and the peaceful transition of power.

Of course, this assumes that, despite Donald Trump challenging the results of last week’s election, Biden and Kamala Harris will be able to take office the conventional way. If that happens, millions of viewers around the world will celebrate and a socially distanced crowd on the National Mall will cheer the end of what they consider a four-year nightmare.

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Donald Trump becomes 11th president to be kicked out of White House after a single term

Joe Biden will be the next President of the United States (Picture: Rex/ Getty)

Donald Trump has become the 11th president to be ousted from the White House after only serving only one term in office.

Trump loss to to Democrat rival Joe Biden saw him join the dreaded single-term president’s club – and made him the first man to do so since George H W Bush lost to Bill Clinton in 1992 after just four years in office.

Most single-term presidents are Republican, with presidents at greater risk of serving only a single term if the country faces economic hardship and sharply divided public opinion – both of which have beset Trump. George HW Bush was ousted after a single term after struggling with an economic recession and decreased focus on foreign policy. He was also unfavorably compared to Bill Clinton, who dazzled voters with his charisma and was hugely popular with black voters.

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Trump Is the Loser

Donald Trump leaves the White House briefing room on November 5. (Carlos Barria / The Atlantic

“We’re going to win so much that you’re going to be sick and tired,” Donald Trump promised in 2016. Over the next four years, the American people did get sick (nearly 10 million of them so far from COVID-19), and they did get tired, and in the end they decided they’d had enough.

In doing so, they exposed Trump, whose entire career and public persona have been built on an image of constantly winning, as a loser. With Pennsylvania having completed its blue shift into Joe Biden’s column, the election is effectively over, and the president has been defeated. The exact contours of the loss aren’t clear yet, but the ultimate outcome is.

Trump has not admitted it, and probably won’t. There’s no reason to expect a grudging concession from him, much less a gracious one; perhaps the most interesting question is whether he’ll bother to show up for Biden’s inauguration, and how he’ll behave if he does. On Thursday, before Pennsylvania flipped blue, Trump spoke for the first time since early Wednesday morning, delivering an unhinged and baseless statement insisting that the election was being stolen from him. (Many of the TV networks, which are very slowly getting wise to his tricks, quickly cut in or made it clear that the statement was nonsense.) As Biden took the lead in Pennsylvania on Friday, the Trump campaign’s general counsel insisted that the race was still on.

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How Trump Lost

The president, as always, was incapable of rising above his failings

President Donald Trump lost to Joe Biden in a nail-biter election in key swing states, demonstrating both the president’s enduring appeal among his fervent supporters and his inability to expand his sphere of support. Going into election night, the polls appear to have missed the enthusiasm of Trump’s base, which turned out in force to reelect him. But firing up his supporters wasn’t enough to win, especially after Trump had turned off key constituencies over the last four years. The close margins in swing states show how close Trump was to reelection—and how he let opportunities to ensure it slip through his fingers.

After assuming office in January 2017, Trump wasted no time in building a campaign operation that his campaign manager unironically nicknamed the Death Star. He amassed a war chest before Democrats even started running. As their primary raged, the economy was strong enough for voters to keep faith in Trump’s handling of it. His team exuded confidence they would coast to victory. Then, the coronavirus hit.

Since Biden did not win in a landslide, it’s easy to think that the result could have been different if the country were not enduring a global pandemic that has killed more than 230,000 Americans and battered the economy in the span of just eight months. Once it arrived, it was inevitable the coronavirus would shape the 2020 contest. But it didn’t have to be a drag on Trump’s reelection. If he had responded responsibly, it could have been his golden ticket to a second term by proving his leadership skills to voters already slipping from his grasp.

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Trump says 'this election is far from over'

U.S. President Donald Trump bows his head during the White House National Day of Prayer Service in the Rose Garden at the White House in Washington, U.S., May 7, 2020. REUTERS/Tom Brenner

President Donald Trump said on Saturday his campaign would begin challenging U.S. election results in court next week after media outlets called the race for Democrat Joe Biden, saying “this election is far from over.”

“We all know why Joe Biden is rushing to falsely pose as the winner, and why his media allies are trying so hard to help him: they don’t want the truth to be exposed,” he said in a statement. “The simple fact is this election is far from over.”

Trump has repeatedly made unfounded claims of fraud in the election.

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