Biden wins: Democrat who vowed return to 'normalcy' defeats Trump in cliffhanger election

WILMINGTON, Del. – Joe Biden, the former vice president and longtime fixture of American politics, won a bitterly fought contest for president Saturday after vowing to usher in a more robust response to the pandemic and a more civil form of politics.

Biden’s victory over President Donald Trump puts the nation on a sharply different course just four years after voters selected one of the most unconventional leaders in American history to shake up establishment politics.

Biden said in a statement he was "honored and humbled" by the win and that it was time for the country to unite and heal.

"With the campaign over, it’s time to put the anger and the harsh rhetoric behind us and come together as a nation," he said.

Democrats failed to secure the swift and overwhelming victory some had hoped for, and Biden's win did not come until four days after Election Day voting began, underscoring the slow, methodical process of counting a crush of absentee ballots that piled into counties across the nation because of the coronavirus pandemic.

The turning point came Saturday, when Biden won his native state of Pennsylvania, one of a trio of northern industrial states Democrats lost in 2016 and one of the biggest Electoral College prizes.

Biden was ahead of Trump in the popular vote by nearly 3 percentage points, 50.5% to 47.7%. With the contests for Georgia, North Carolina and Alaska yet to be called, Biden was leading in the Electoral College, 290-214.

In an election shaped by the resurgent virus that had killed about 230,000 Americans and left millions out of work, Biden argued that he had the temperament, experience and character to provide steady leadership at a time of crisis. He ran as a centrist Democrat focused on pocketbook issues such as health care and reviving the economy but also on restoring "normalcy" to Washington after four years of drama under Trump.

The Democratic victory was history-making, most notably because Biden's running mate, Sen. Kamala Harris, D-Calif., will become the first woman, African American and South Asian American to assume the vice presidency. Biden, who will be 78 at his inauguration, will also be the oldest person in U.S. history to become president.

Trump's defeat will make him only the second one-term president since 1992, when Republican George H.W. Bush lost to Democrat Bill Clinton. And like Clinton, Trump is the only modern era president to be impeached; both were acquitted by the Senate.

Biden will enter the White House at a perilous moment, partly because of the pandemic but also because of huge fissures that have widened in American society over immigration, race relations and racism, gun control policies, economic inequalities and even the meaning of truth and U.S. leadership in the world.

Biden has said he wants to govern all Americans, not just the Democratic base. But even with that promise, the divisions will not disappear. The closeness of the election, and the likelihood that Republicans will keep the Senate, mean Biden faces a huge challenge in trying to stitch the country together.

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Biden carried the popular vote with more than 74 million votes – a hurdle Trump failed to clear in 2016. The count, which is likely to go higher as more ballots are tallied, left Biden with a record popular vote, though that was driven partly by an increase in population since the last record was set in 2008.

"Once this election is finalized and behind us, it'll be time for us to do what we've always done as Americans, to put the harsh rhetoric of the campaign behind us, to lower the temperature, to see each other again, to listen to one another," Biden said Wednesday.

A wrenching roller-coaster ride

In the end, the election unfolded with the kind of drama Trump often lives for: a wrenching roller-coaster ride in which the president was at first up before falling quickly throughout the next day. Trump claimed the huge prize of Florida, his adopted home state, foreclosing on a quick Biden win and turning the race into a cliffhanger.

There were surprises along the way. Despite predictions of a lengthy saga in Florida, Trump snapped up the state decisively. And Biden wrested away Arizona, once a dependably red state that the Republican president carried by more than 3 percentage points in 2016.

Over days of vote-counting, a crucial question loomed: whether Biden could piece back together Democrats' "blue wall" – Michigan, Wisconsin and Pennsylvania – that crumbled four years ago, dooming Hillary Clinton's race against Trump.

The outcome in the Rust Belt was far from clear when Biden addressed hundreds of supporters at drive-in rally in his hometown of Wilmington, Delaware, just before midnight Tuesday.

"Your patience is commendable," Biden told supporters who had parked their cars, decked out in campaign paraphernalia, in neat, diagonal rows, demarcated by red, white and blue traffic cones at Wilmington's Chase Center.

Waiting for results

By that point, it was clear that the results of the presidential contest were to remain inconclusive for some time – at least until the morning, and likely much longer.

When the voting wrapped up Tuesday, Trump had substantial leads and appeared to be poised to capture the most contested states. But Biden's momentum palpably shifted Wednesday afternoon when Wisconsin was called in his favor, followed soon after by Michigan. Arizona had already been forecast as a Biden win, backing a Democratic presidential candidate for the first time since 1996.

As Biden's vote tallies inched higher in Georgia and Pennsylvania and he maintained a slim lead in Nevada, the path for Trump had narrowed substantially by the time Americans sat down for dinner on Wednesday.

That change occurred as election officials began counting absentee ballots, which leaned Biden's way. In many key battleground states, including Pennsylvania, mail ballots were counted after votes that had been cast in person on Election Day. Since Democrats voted early in much higher numbers than Republicans, Biden's lead in Pennsylvania became evident as more ballots were counted.

By Friday morning, the excitement was palpable in Biden's hometown of Wilmington, Delaware. After Biden overtook Trump in Pennsylvania, Democratic supporters started to gather in the parking lot outside of the secured zone by the Chase Center. Holding signs and American flags, supporters exchanged shouts of, “It’s gonna be a great day” and “Here we go, guys!”

It was clear that Biden was about to capture Pennsylvania, and with it the 270 Electoral College votes he needed to clinch a presidential victory following the tumultuous 2020 campaign.

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On Friday night, Biden made a brief indoor appearance at the Chase Center where he said Americans "spoke loudly for our ticket” but he again urged patience as the ballot counting continued.

“We don’t have a final declaration, a victory yet,” Biden said. “We’re going to win this race with a clear majority of the nation behind us.”

Around 11:30 a.m. the next day, the declaration of victory for the former vice president set off a crescendo of honks, cheers and shouts of “Free at Last” and “God Bless America” in Wilmington outside Biden's campaign headquarters.

Turnout smashes record

While Trump and others had warned of widespread fraud, intimidation and even violence ahead of Election Day, there were no signs of major problems. Instead, the election was defined by a record number of Americans voting by mail with few incidents. Millions more patiently waited in lines at schools and government buildings across the country to cast their ballots. More than 160 million Americans voted, according to estimates, by far the largest turnout of modern elections.

Though it was not widespread, there was tension: Protesters took to the streets in cities across the country. A crowd made up mostly of Trump supporters gathered as election workers counted ballots in Arizona. The National Guard was deployed in Portland, Oregon. Arrests were made in Minneapolis and New York City.

Trump, who throughout the year repeatedly declined to say whether he would accept the outcome of the race, made clear Thursday that he would not concede without a fight, filing a series of court challenges that recalled the protracted legal battle that tore the country apart in 2000 when the Supreme Court weighed into the election between President George W. Bush and Democratic nominee Al Gore.

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The president's aides also threatened to demand a recount in Wisconsin. As Trump grew more impatient with the outcome, he made wilder claims – prompting Twitter, the social media platform that elevated his national prominence in the first place, to label many of his posts with a warning that his words "might be misleading."

"We are up BIG, but they are trying to STEAL the Election," Trump wrote Wednesday in one of the tweets labeled with a warning because there was no evidence of any wrongdoing in the counting of the ballots. "We will never let them do it."

Biden, making his third White House run, campaigned on expanding access to health care and investing in middle-class jobs while combating the pandemic with a more robust federal response. He promised to rebuild friendships with allies in Europe and Asia with whom Trump often bickered while confronting adversaries he said Trump coddled in Russia, China and North Korea.

Difference of style

But by far the biggest difference between the two men was on style: Biden ran on his temperament, offering it as a contrast to the bombastic, unconventional approach Trump has taken to the presidency for four years. Biden essentially proposed to rebuild a functioning federal government based on his experience as vice president under President Barack Obama and his 36 years in the Senate representing Delaware.

Throughout the campaign, Trump tried to frame Biden as far left – a “socialist” in his words – despite the former vice president’s record as a bipartisan dealmaker who ran to the right of more liberal candidates in the primary, including Sens. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., and Bernie Sanders, I-Vt. Biden never embraced a “Medicare for All” system of health care or the so-called Green New Deal for the environment backed by liberals.

Even before the race was called, Biden began shifting away from his campaign talking points and toward a more presidential rhetoric that was focused on calming tensions. As counting continued in battlegrounds throughout the day and Trump delivered fiery remarks at the White House, Biden came to a lectern in Delaware and urged Americans to take a breath.

"Democracy is sometimes messy," he said. "It sometimes requires a little patience."

This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Joe Biden wins election: Defeats President Trump in cliffhanger race