By Lamin Njie
Joe Biden’s remarkable late recovery in the battleground state of Pennsylvania has seen him become the 46th president of the United States – and dashing any hope of a second term for Donald Trump.
America this past Tuesday conducted one of the most emotive elections in her history – an election that will be remembered for its high stakes nature but also for its unprecedented voter turnout. A record over 144 million people voted in the election.
The state that put the contest and four-day agonising wait to bed is Pennsylvania where Trump had led Biden since on election day Nov. 3. However, a disciplined Joe Biden had continued to eat into Trump’s lead in the state as more mail-in ballots got counted and by Friday morning, the democrat stunned Trump by modestly pulling ahead. News networks such as CNN and BBC have now projected Biden has won in the state.
Biden by early Friday led Trump in Pennsylvania by more than 5,000 votes, where over six million people voted.
Trump had earlier on Thursday evening railed against the election accusing entire fraternities such as the media and big tech of masterminding an elaborate heist of the election.
“If you count the legal votes, I easily win. If you count the illegal votes, they can try to steal the election from us,” Trump who did not tender any evidence to back his claims and was only reappearing from hibernation for nearly two days began by saying at the White House.
He said elsewhere in his 17-minute speech: “There were now only a few states yet to be decided in the presidential race. The voting apparatus of those states have run in all cases by democrats.
“We were winning in all the key locations by a lot actually and then our numbers started getting miraculously whittled away in secret and they wouldn’t allow legally permissible observers.
“We went to court in a couple of instances and we were able to get the observers put in and when the observers got there, they wanted them 60, 70 feet away, 80 feet away, a 100 feet away, outside the building to observe people inside the building.”
Some frustrated news media organisations like ABC and NBC took the editorial decision to cut away from his press conference – if at all that’s what it was – saying he was making false statements and smearing America – a country a lot of countries in the world look up to.
Trump had also elsewhere thrown the integrity of the contest into question when he for example earlier on asked that counting be stopped, he even lost his legal bid at the supreme court in Georgia while trying to achieve that.
Joe Biden on the other hand had all throughout adopted a calm disposition speaking to the American people every now and then, suing for calm but also asking Americans to put their faith in the system.
“”I ask everyone to stay calm. All the people to stay calm. The process is working. The count is being completed. And we’ll know very soon.
“Democracy is sometimes messy. It sometimes requires a little patience as well,” Mr Biden had said in an address to the American people on Thursday.
Again on Friday, Biden addressed Americans from his Wilmington, Delaware base where more secret service agents were unleashed to beef up his security, as the inevitable continued to ring.
“We’re going to win this race,” Biden said in a short address at few minutes to 11pm Friday while vowing to work as hard for those who voted against him as those who voted for him.
But his rival Trump was still insisting on the election not being fair, expressing hope his legal bids that are underway would address the issue.
“I had such a big lead in all of these states late into election night, only to see the leads miraculously disappear as the days went by. Perhaps these leads will return as our legal proceedings move forward!’ he tweeted. He had first cautioned Biden not to wrongfully claim the office of president.
The former vice president’s late resurgence in Pennsylvania is what has truly inflicted the coup de grace on Trump’s re-election chances.
Mr Biden won the race by 273 electoral votes, well past the 270 threshold, according to CNN’s projection. Trump now has until January 20 to leave the White House.
