Biden poised for presidency

This news has been read 16698 times!

WASHINGTON, Nov 5, (AP): Democrat Joe Biden was pushing closer to the 270 Electoral College votes needed to carry the White House, securing victories in the “blue wall” battlegrounds of Wisconsin and Michigan and narrowing President Donald Trump’s path. With just a handful of states still up for grabs, Trump tried to press his case in court in some key swing states. It was unclear if any of his campaign’s legal maneuvering over balloting would succeed in shifting the race in his favor.

Two days after Election Day, neither candidate had amassed the votes needed to win the White House. But Biden’s victories in the Great Lakes states left him at 264, meaning he was one battleground state away — any would do — from becoming president-elect. Trump, with 214 electoral votes, faced a much higher hurdle.

To reach 270, he needed to claim all four remaining battlegrounds: Pennsylvania, North Carolina, Georgia and Nevada. With millions of votes yet to be tabulated, Biden already had received more than 71 million votes, the most in history. At an afternoon news conference Wednesday, the former vice-president said he expected to win the presidency but stopped short of outright declaring victory. “I will govern as an American president,” Biden said. “There will be no red states and blue states when we win. Just the United States of America.”

Trump, in contrast, was escalating his efforts to sow doubt about the outcome of the race. A day after falsely claimed that he had won the election, he voiced support Thursday for ceasing the tallying of legally-cast votes in a tweet, saying, “Stop The Count!” He later falsely asserted that ballots received after Election Day “will not be counted,” a move that if implemented would affect military ballots, as his campaign propagated baseless allegations of fraud. Elections are run by individual state, county and local governments and Trump’s public comments have no impact on the tallying of votes across the country.

Trump’s campaign engaged in a flurry of legal activity to try to improve the Republican president’s chances and cast doubt on the election results, requesting a recount in Wisconsin and filing lawsuits in Pennsylvania, Michigan and Georgia. Statewide recounts in Wisconsin have historically changed the vote tally by only a few hundred votes; Biden led by more than 20,000 ballots out of nearly 3.3 million counted.

Battleground

Biden has an edge over Trump after victories in Wisconsin and Michigan, two key Midwestern battleground states. Contests in Georgia, Pennsylvania, Nevada and North Carolina were tight with votes still being tabulated. The Trump campaign said it was confident the president would ultimately pull out a victory in Arizona, where votes were also still being counted, including in Maricopa County, the state’s most populous area.

The AP has declared Biden the winner in Arizona and said Thursday that it was monitoring the vote count as it proceeds. “The Associated Press continues to watch and analyze vote count results from Arizona as they come in,” said Sally Buzbee, AP’s executive editor. “We will follow the facts in all cases.” For four years, Democrats have been haunted by the crumbling of the blue wall, the trio of Great Lakes states — Michigan, Wisconsin and Pennsylvania — that their candidates had been able to count on every four years.

But Trump’s populist appeal struck a chord with white working-class voters and he captured all three in 2016 by a combined total of just 77,000 votes. The candidates waged a fierce fight for the states this year, with Biden’s everyman political persona resonating in bluecollar towns while his campaign also pushed to increase turnout among Black voters in cities like Detroit and Milwaukee.

Determined

It was unclear when a national winner would be determined after a long, bitter campaign dominated by the coronavirus and its effects on Americans and the national economy. But even as Biden’s prospects improved, the US on Wednesday set another record for daily confirmed coronavirus cases as several states posted all-time highs. The pandemic has killed more than 233,000 people in the United States.

Trump spent much of Wednesday in the White House residence, huddling with advisers and fuming at media coverage showing his Democratic rival picking up battlegrounds. Trump used his Twitter feed to falsely claim victory in several key states and amplify unsubstantiated conspiracy theories about Democratic gains as absentee and early votes were tabulated.

Trump campaign manager Bill Stepien said the president would formally request a Wisconsin recount, citing “irregularities” in several counties. And the campaign said it was filing suit in Michigan and Pennsylvania to halt ballot counting on grounds that it wasn’t given proper access to observe. Still more legal action was launched in Georgia. At the same time, hundreds of thousands of votes were still to be counted in Pennsylvania, and Trump’s campaign said it was moving to intervene in existing Supreme Court litigation over counting mail-in ballots there.

In other closely watched races, Trump picked up Florida, the largest of the swing states, and held onto Texas and Ohio while Biden kept New Hampshire and Minnesota. The election scrambled seats in the House and Senate but ultimately left Congress much like it began, deeply split as voters resisted big changes despite the heated race at the top of the ticket for the White House. It’s an outcome that dampens Democratic demands for a bold new agenda, emboldens Republicans and almost ensures partisan gridlock regardless of who wins the presidency. Or perhaps, as some say, it provides a rare opening for modest across-the-aisle cooperation. Speaker Nancy Pelosi was on track to keep control of the Democratic House, but saw her majority shrinking and her leadership called into question. Control of the Senate tilted Republicans’ way as they fended off an onslaught of energized challengers, though a few races remained undecided Wednesday. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell said Wednesday he’s confident “no matter who ends up running the government” they’ll be “trying to overcome all that and get results.”

One certainty is the upended projections will force a rethinking of polling, fundraising and the very messages the parties use to reach voters in the Trump era and beyond. By evening, Pelosi had all but declared Democrat Joe Biden the winner, saying House Democrats “will now have the opportunity to deliver extraordinary progress” on party priorities — lowering healthcare costs, providing jobs through new infrastructure and others. But the dismal outcome for congressional Democrats put in question the ambitious plans for legislative overhauls pushed by the party, eager for a sweep of Washington government. Even if Democrats capture the White House and a narrowly split Senate, Pelosi’s leverage to force deal-making on her terms will be diminished by her House losses. If Donald Trump wins another term, his Republican allies particularly in the Senate will likely feel more comfortable sticking with him after escaping an electoral wipeout, though they have yet to outline a GOP agenda.

This news has been read 16698 times!