‘TIME TO HEAL IN AMERICA’
As national vote count shows insurmountable lead, Biden and Harris call to end division, fight pandemic
Joseph R. Biden Jr. will be the next president of the United States, turning an underdog primary campaign into a historic national win and transforming Arizona into a key battleground.
His victory comes as the U.S. faces severe challenges, from a deadly pandemic to a wounded economy. President Donald Trump, defeated in his bid for a second term, will remain on the job until Biden is sworn in Jan. 20.
Biden delivered a victory speech at a drive-in rally in Wilmington, Delaware, on Saturday night, where he stressed the need for unity and touched on the policy agenda that his administration will seek. And the work starts now: He plans to name a group of advisers Monday to develop a COVID-19 strategy based on science.
He laid out a vision of America as a nation of greatness going through a time of deep division, but one that can and should come together again. He mentioned his
family, his faith and his deep convictions in the power of the country as those gathered honked car horns in approval.
“We must restore the soul of America. 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’s time for our better angels to prevail. Tonight, the whole world is watching America. And I believe at our best, America is a beacon for the globe. We will lead not only by the example of our power, but by the power of our example,” Biden said.
Biden and Vice President-elect Kamala Harris were declared the winners four days after Election Day as vote counting across the country gave them an insurmountable lead over Trump and Vice President Mike Pence. Biden took back states like Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin that had voted for Trump in 2016.
The win is historic, both for the rarity of ousting an incumbent president and the representation that Harris brings as the first Black woman and first Asian American to hold that office.
It was Biden’s third run for president. His win marked a moment of history for Arizona, too, which by early projections voted for the Democratic presidential candidate for the first time in 24 years after a decade of grassroots efforts to turn out and engage voters by the state’s activist left.
Republicans dissatisfied with Trump joined independents and Democrats to vote blue in what appeared likely to be a narrow win. Fox News and The Associated Press called Arizona for Biden early Wednesday morning, but other entities have held off on projecting his win in the state as vote counting continued Saturday and his margin over Trump narrowed.
The election stamped Arizona firmly on the map of battleground states, and voters here can expect to gain attention from national campaigns in elections to come.
Biden said he was “honored and humbled” that the country chose him.
“In the face of unprecedented obstacles, a record number of Americans voted. Proving once again, that democracy beats deep in the heart of America,” he said in a statement after he was declared the winner.
While the win was celebrated by
Democrats and others, it is just the start of a new phase for a country that remains deeply polarized, distrustful and flooded with misinformation. That division comes at a time when the U.S. faces some of the most complicated challenges it has seen in generations.
Biden needs to unite a country fractured by a pandemic, economic upheaval, racial tensions and climate challenges. He must rebuild broken relationships and alliances around the globe.
He also may need to convince a portion of the country that he actually has won.
Instead of concession, Trump and his most ardent supporters are spoiling for a fight. At the Arizona Capitol on Saturday, supporters chanted, “Trump won.” They protested outside a downtown Phoenix building where elections workers counted votes, calling on them to count the votes. They floated conspiracies about felt-tip pens, though over time, the protests there grew into a carnival of conspiracies, only some of which related to the election at hand.
The Trump campaign has promised more legal challenges in the days to come. It filed one in Maricopa County,
over the use of voting machines, on Saturday.
Win brings end to anxious week
Saturday’s projections nationally, though, provided some finality and a break to the tension caused by not knowing who would pull off the win.
The road from Election Day to victory for Biden was drawn out through the week, with a projected win called by The Associated Press and other news organizations on Saturday morning.
Pennsylvania pushed the presidentelect past 270 electoral votes, and Nevada’s six votes were projected for Biden soon after. Georgia and North Carolina remain uncalled, leaving a final electoral college total unsettled. Biden is winning the popular vote by more than 4 million.
In Arizona, Trump chipped away at Biden’s lead throughout the week, but potentially not at the pace needed to overcome Biden. A final result within 200 votes would trigger an automatic recount, but his margin remains far larger than that.
Media organizations project winners based on math, but elections officials count and certify all votes. Their work
continues, here and elsewhere, as deadlines for these certifications loom. In Arizona, the election will be certified on Nov. 30.
In a statement after Biden was declared the winner by most news organizations, Trump said his opponent was “rushing to falsely pose as the winner.” He said the election was “far from over,” noting that no states had yet certified their results.
“Beginning Monday, our campaign will start prosecuting our case in court to ensure election laws are fully upheld and the rightful winner is seated,” Trump said.
Arizona in the national spotlight
The full-court press the campaigns unleashed on Arizona in September and October proved prescient given the closeness of the outcome here.
As the counting commenced, the attention of the nation turned to a handful of states, Arizona among them.
People from across the country learned the names of counties and the intricacies of ballot counting. Arizonans
received calls and texts from friends or family in other states, asking for updates.
Arizonans last voted for a Democratic presidential candidate in1996, when Bill Clinton won reelection. Before that, they had not voted for a Democrat since 1948, when President Harry Truman carried Arizona.
For Biden’s supporters, his win offered relief after a week, and a presidency, filled with anxiety.
When the national race was called on Saturday morning, people in major cities flooded their streets in celebration, dancing and cheering. The Arizona reaction was more subtle, likely because the metro area is much more spread out and the populace much more purple than the solid blue of many large American cities.
Janey Pearl Starks, a 39-year-old Phoenix resident who took two weeks off work before the election to help deliver a Biden-Harris victory in Arizona, broke into tears thinking about what the win means for Latinos like herself, who have fought for immigrants and people of color here.
Trump has targeted and dehumanized Latinos and immigrants like no president before, she said, adding that such treatment ends with a Biden and Harris administration.
“I feel, personally, like it is the first time that I can take a nice deep breath,” she said, exhaling before she spoke again. “The pain that he has caused people I know and love cannot be forgotten or forgiven. But today it was made clear that the majority of Americans, and soon it will be clear that the majority of Arizonans, believe that we are better than hate.”
Stephanie Maldonado, the campaign director for Living United for Change in Arizona, which helped turn out the vote for Democrats up and down the ballot, celebrated the fact that the country has, for the first time, a vice president who is a woman, Black and Asian American, and the daughter of immigrants.
Little girls will grow up with a woman as the second most powerful person in America. Maldonado knows that will change her daughter’s life.
“I think it’s a really powerful moment, and as a mom, and as a woman of color, I’m really proud and I’m so grateful that my daughter will see in her lifetime and start to believe that there’s no question in how women should be seen — women are powerful. Just having Kamala in office reinforces that women can do anything; we can do anything,” Maldonado said.
Harris spoke about these firsts in Wilmington on Saturday night, before Biden took the stage. Wearing a white suit, she applauded Biden for choosing a female running mate and noted the significance of her role as vice presidentelect. She mentioned her mother, an immigrant from India, and how she believed deeply in America.
“I am thinking about her, and about the generations of women, Black women, Asian, white, Latina, Native American women, who, throughout our nation’s history, have paved the way for this moment tonight. Women who fought and sacrificed so much for equality and liberty and justice for all. Including the Black women who are often, too often, overlooked, but so often prove they are the backbone of our democracy,” Harris said.
For Trump’s most ardent supporters, the projections had a different effect, offering another example of elites and media they see as foes attempting to dictate reality.
Hundreds of Trump supporters gathered at the Arizona Capitol, and at state
capitals around the country, for a Saturday protest dubbed “Stop the Steal,” promoted locally by the Arizona Republican Party.
Many clutched American flags and Trump signs. Arizona Republican Party Chair Kelli Ward encouraged people in the crowd to report any voter fraud. There is no evidence of widespread voter fraud in this election so far.
At the Trumped Store in Show Low, a coffee shop and emporium that sells Trump items that has become a clubhouse of sorts for local Trump supporters, the mood remained jovial.
Steve Slaton, the co-owner, had the TV tuned in to One America Network, a conservative outlet that told viewers the results of the election were still in doubt.
“I’m telling folks to hold on and wait,” Slaton said. “If anyone calls the election, they’re getting too far ahead of themselves.”
Slaton said he and his co-owner, Karen MacKean, had thought ahead to the hypothetical possibility of a Biden victory. If that would happen, the store would change its name to the Arizona Resistance Store. It would sell T-shirts and other items with what he expects will be topical anti-liberal slogans.
“Impeach Biden and all that,” he said. “You know, kind of turn the tables.”
How Arizona went for a Democrat
The road to a potential Democratic presidential win in Arizona came after years of community organizing by Latino groups who worked to register and turn out voters, particularly after the passage of Senate Bill 1070 in 2010.
Indigenous voters in tribal nations in Arizona also turned out strongly for Biden. So, too, did young people.
Tomás Robles, co-executive director of LUCHA, said that Democratic gains were 10 years of grassroots organizing in the making. LUCHA and other groups put in the work to talk regularly to Latino voters and turn them out. They knocked on doors, sent out mail, put up billboards, sent texts.
Their efforts succeeded at the federal level here, he said, noting both the Biden win and that of Mark Kelly, who defeated U.S. Sen. Martha McSally. There’s still more to do at the local and state levels, he said.
“Ten years ago, nobody would have considered Arizona anywhere near a battleground state,” Robles said.
While Trump’s divisiveness and comments disparaging Latinos played into Arizonans’ decisions this election, Robles said the blue turn isn’t unique to this president.
“Arizona is going to be a battleground state at every level of government for
the foreseeable future,” he said.
Throughout the campaign cycle, both campaigns worked to build support, courting religious voters, seniors, women and Latinos. Arizona also has enjoyed a population boom, offering an influx of new voters to be won over, many of whom are coming from more liberal states.
With a race as close as the one between Biden and Trump in Arizona — a difference of about 18,713 votes, as of Saturday night — all factions that turned out for Biden likely played a role in the victory.
Some prominent Republicans, including Cindy McCain, broke from the party and endorsed Biden after Trump had repeatedly insulted her husband, the late U.S. Sen. John McCain, a favorite Arizona son.
On Saturday, McCain called Biden a “dear friend” and offered him and Harris congratulations. Her daughter, Meghan McCain, did the same.
John McCain’s 2008 concession speech, when he lost the presidency to Barack Obama, was posted across the internet again this week.
Its appeal seems rooted in several factors. For one, McCain conceded, something Trump has not done and may not do. McCain congratulated Obama and expressed his admiration for the man’s character, imploring his supporters to work together with the incoming president for the betterment of the country.
For Arizona’s right, which has largely held the reins of power here for a generation, Biden winning the state shows a changing Arizona, and one that they will have to work harder to win over.
U.S. Rep. Debbie Lesko, R-Ariz., stuck firmly by the president’s side throughout the campaign, gaining national notoriety on the right. Lesko acknowledged the state has moved to the left but credits conservatives for the growth that has helped cause the shift.
“What I would like to do is maybe inform people or educate people more that the reason that Arizona is such an attractive place to live fiscally wise, meaning cost-of-living and less government control, is because we have a Republican-controlled Legislature and a Republican governor that believes in less government regulations and lower taxes,” Lesko said Friday.
Rep. Ruben Gallego, D-Ariz., one of Biden’s more energetic surrogates nationally, said Arizona is officially a swing state with more to do for Democrats. There’s work to be done here, up and down the ballot, but securing victories for Biden and for Democratic U.S. Senate candidate Mark Kelly were major wins, he said.
“We didn’t win with the Anglo vote in
Arizona. It’s the Latino vote, plus Native Americans and others, such as Asians and African Americans that actually put us over the top,” he said.
What’s next for president-elect
Winning an election is just a first step. Uniting a divided country, advancing a policy agenda and repairing relationships with other countries and world institutions likely will prove more difficult. Democrats failed to win a majority in the U.S. Senate, leaving Congress with a split that will require bipartisan cooperation to pass legislation.
Reuniting the country after a divisive Trump presidency is one of Biden’s ultimate challenges, and an echo of thenPresident Barack Obama’s hope and change message that he brought to the White House, when Biden served as vice president.
The country also faces several significant crises. The COVID-19 pandemic is spreading at its highest-ever levels in the United States, with cases rising in most parts of the country. A stronger federal response to the pandemic could come from the Biden presidency.
On immigration, Biden offers hope for “Dreamers,” whose immigration status under the Trump presidency was in peril. For a border state like Arizona, Biden’s policies on border control could bring change. His presidency may begin to confront climate change, the consequences of which many communities saw this summer, as wildfires raged and temperatures in Arizona soared for weeks on end.
Already, world leaders from countries like the United Kingdom, France, Germany and Canada offered congratulations and welcomed Biden as the next U.S. president.
Still, in the minds of Trump supporters, lingering doubts and unsubstantiated claims of voter fraud remain unsettled. That alone provides Biden a challenge.
Lesko said she was unaware of any fraud in counting ballots in Arizona but resisted any effort to call Arizona for Biden until the count was complete.
“I just think we should wait until they’re counted. It’s only going to be a few more days. To me, everybody should just be patient and wait until the ballots are counted,” she said.
Throughout the week, Biden’s nightly remarks offered calm and collectedness. He stressed the importance of counting all votes and the idea that power is not taken by a politician, but flows from the electorate.
After the race was called Saturday, Biden remained on message. A video he posted to Twitter showed the broad diversity of the country and stressed that his presidency would be one for all Americans.
In Wilmington, he said Americans, regardless of who they voted for, should call upon their better angels. He referenced a favorite Catholic hymn, “On Eagle’s Wings,” saying the country now must work together, with “full hearts and steady hands, with faith in America and in each other.”
It’s time for unity, he said, and time to move on.
“This is the time to heal in America,” he said.
“Let’s give each other a chance. It’s time to put away the harsh rhetoric. Lower the temperature, see each other again, listen to each other again. And to make progress, we have to stop treating our opponents as our enemies. They are not our enemies; they’re Americans.”