The Election of Joe Biden and The Path Forward
Joe Biden will have to bridle a raging pandemic, an economic calamity, and a truculent Republican Party.
The election of Joseph R. Biden, Jr. as the 46th President of the United States is the zenith of a decades-long personal ambition for the President-elect. From the time he was in grade school, Biden had told friends that his dream was to become President of the United States. After two failed attempts at the nation’s highest public office in 1988 and 2008, 36 years serving as the senior United States Senator from Delaware, and eight years serving as Vice President of the United States under President Barack Obama, Joe Biden had finally fulfilled his lifelong dream: becoming President of the United States of America.
On the warm Saturday midmorning of November 7, CNN, along with major media networks and news publications, officially projected that Joe Biden would become the 46th President of the United States and repudiate incumbent officeholder President Donald J. Trump of a second term, thus becoming the first challenger to deny an incumbent a second term since 1992 when then-Governor Bill Clinton defeated President George H.W. Bush. Biden also accumulated the most votes of any candidate that has ever run for the Presidency.
The election of Joe Biden to the Presidency ended days of post-election anxiety, only exacerbated by endless analysis from John King and Steve Kornacki of CNN and MSNBC as they disentangled the votes coming from swing states and swing counties that could hand the Presidency to Joe Biden or offer a lifeline to President Trump.
As news of Joe Biden´s victory spread across the nation, President Trump was spotted golfing at his golf club outside of Washington D.C. unaware that he just lost the election to Joe Biden. In the days following, as President-elect Biden’s popular vote total grew to over 80 million votes and flipped GOP stronghold states such as Arizona and Georgia (states haven’t won by a Democrat since Bill Clinton in 1992 & 1996), President Trump spurned to concede the race to Joe Biden. As a result of Trump´s unwillingness to concede the election to Biden, the current outgoing administration took the unprecedented step in occluding the presidential transition from his administration to the incoming Biden-Harris administration. The blockade by the part of Trump to refuse to work with President-elect Biden’s team is yet blow to the democratic traditions and norms that have guided this imperfect democracy for over 200 years. Moreover, because of the Trump administration´s early refusal to ascertain Joe Biden´s victory, his transition team was not getting ingress to the resources such as national security briefings, access to government information regarding the pandemic, background checks, and funding imperative to the success of an incoming President who will be entrusted with the worst public health crisis this country has faced in 100 years. (The GSA ascertained President-elect Biden’s victory on November 23, 2020, more than three weeks after Biden was declared the victor against Trump). The election of Joe Biden as the 46th President of the United States of America for 80 million Americans marks a renewal in American democracy and exceptionalism. President-elect Biden has a clear mandate to transform our country and “build back better.”
