Biden headed to the White House. Joe Biden, the US Democratic presidential challenger, reaches what appears to be a tipping point in the contest for the White House, taking the lead in Pennysylvania and Georgia as the tally of postal ballots continues to skew heavily in the Democrat’s favour. With a Biden victory looking assured, CNN reports that a “national defence airspace” will be established above the Democratic candidate’s house in Wilmington, Delaware, meaning he will begin to receive the protection of the US military, the first trappings of the presidency. But a smooth transfer of power still looks far from certain. After the lead slipped in Pennsylvania, the White House put out a statement insisting “this election is not over”. Donald Trump and a handful of loyalists continue to allege election fraud, without providing any substantial evidence. Biden is reported to be seeking to rally prominent figures from both parties to endorse the legitimacy of the election, at a nervous moment for US democracy, amid fears that the Trump camp will now try to disrupt the state-by-state certification of results and the choice of state electors to send to the electoral college, which formally names the president.
After three full days of waiting patiently for the slow march of vote counting to work itself out, Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden finally stormed into the lead in battlegrounds Pennsylvania and Georgia on Friday morning, closing in on the White House which continues to turn on a handful of incredibly tight contests.
The Biden campaign believes that it has crossed the Pennsylvania challenge and is “joyous”, according to reporters on the ground in Delaware, the Biden headquarters.
Biden leads Trump by nearly 6,000 votes in Pennsylvania and over 1,000 in deep red Georgia.
Millions of votes are still to be counted but even before we have the final tally, Biden has already 73 million votes nationally, the most in American political history. About 130,000 votes remain to be counted in Pennsylvania.
Trump is fuming, he remains defiant and continues to allege “fraud” in Pennsylvania and other battlegrounds. His children have chimed into the overall White House meltdown, in terms that generally occupy the wide arc between what’s “legal” and “illegal”.
Biden leads Trump 253 to 214 in the electoral vote tally. A victory in Pennsylvania means it is game over for Trump, who ran a wild campaign in 2016 and has transformed the White House in the strangest of ways in the last four years.
Biden is a sharp contrast to Trump, both in the personal and political realm. The last three days have shown Americans glimpses of that very difference.
Biden spent every day since November 3 trying to ease tensions and delivering his messages with little outward show of anxiety.
“I ask everyone to stay calm. The process is working,” Biden has said repeatedly. “It is the will of the voters. No one, not anyone else who chooses the President of the United States of America.”
Earlier, for the third straight day, Americans from coast to coast were still journeying on their caffeine-spiked red-eye roller coaster of a political blockbuster like no other. It’s Friday, November 6, and we still don’t have a winner for Trump versus Biden. American politics is turning on Pennsylvania and the numbers tumbling out of there overnight are overwhelmingly in favour of the Biden-Harris ticket.
If Joe Biden wins Pennsylvania, he wins the White House. For Donald Trump, the state is a must-win for any chance to stay in the game.
That trend is being powered by Philadelphia, the state’s biggest city. Biden is winning big in Philadelphia. In this city alone, there are about 54,000 mail ballots that are still being counted at around 8 a.m. EST.
Much of the mail ballots are going for Biden at a rate of 91 per cent and this is being repeated in county after county, it’s not an isolated pattern in Philly alone.
What that means is that whenever the next lot of results come in, it’s going to be in the game changer category, unless it goes in a completely opposite direction from what we’ve been seeing here for the last 15 hours, nonstop.
Democratic voters went all in on using the mail vote, Republicans turned out on election day. That’s what we’re seeing in the numbers coming out on Friday. Pennsylvania had just two ways to vote: Mail or in person. There was no in-person early voting possible here. So, it figures that votes getting counted today are skewing blue and adding more to Biden’s total rather than Trump’s total.
We are awaiting around 160,000 votes more. Biden has plenty of room to catch up with Trump and potentially run away with the big prize. (IANS)