America goes for change
For four long days, the world stopped to watch.
The United States presidential election always grabs attention from all quarters, but perhaps not as much as this time.
Hours and then days passed before, finally, four days after the closing of the polling booths, the winner was announced. Joe Biden, representing the Democratic Party, was declared to have won the Pennsylvania state, picking up the Electoral College votes he needed to surpass the 270 required to take the White House.
Outgoing Republican President Donald Trump remains defiant, refusing to concede as he claims irregularities which he intends fighting against in courts of law without, however, substantiating them.
Biden, a former vice-president to Barack Obama, will be inaugurated as the US’s 46th President on 20 January, a full 10 weeks away during which there needs to be a transition between the Trump administration and the new one. It will not be easy, given the way the two sides campaigned.
But now is the time to end all political rhetoric, as Biden said soon after he was declared the winner. There aren’t blue or red states, only American states, he added. This is, of course, easier said than done, considering the bitterness which years of division have brought about all across America.
Biden brought together all the forces that do not necessarily endorse his moderate approach, but which lined up behind him because they had a common enemy, Trump. Now that Trump has been pushed aside, their agenda is not necessarily the same as Biden’s. The President-elect will also have to contend with a country that, some say, has not been so divided since the Civil War and on the brink of an economic disaster largely brought about by the COVID-19 pandemic.
Biden ran for the presidency twice before 2020, both failed and were short-lived campaigns. He passed on running in 2016, but returned with fresh enthusiasm to fight Trump.
He obtained more than 74 million votes, more than any other presidential candidate ever, but Trump’s tally also topped all previous records, meaning that his views – debatable and controversial – are accepted by millions of Americans. The 2020 campaign exposed the depths of Trump’s support, particularly among white, rural Americans.
They saw in him a president who fought against establishment forces in Washington. He made his supporters’ grievances his own and gave them a voice where they believed they had none. But his opponents will never forgive him for belittling the Coronavirus pandemic, which has plagued the US and hit nearly 10 million Americans. The US, it must be remembered, has one-fifth of the overall number of COVID-19 victims worldwide.
Is it the end of Trump? Some are already floating the idea that he will be back in four years’ time. We’ll see.
Biden must share his success with his vice-president-elect, Kamala Harris, the first person of South Asian descent to be elected to the second most important post in the country, and the first woman to do so. She represents multiculturalism that defines America but has so far been largely absent in the power centres. It is a victory for her too.