05 November,2020 06:54 AM IST | Washington | Agencies
People watch Biden give a speech shortly after midnight on Election Day on Wednesday. Pic/AFP
It was a victory celebration without a victory. Empty wine glasses littered a table in the East Room of the White House. Pizza boxes and cans of White Claw hard seltzer abounded elsewhere in the complex. As Election Day came and went without a verdict in the presidential race, President Donald Trump grew agitated. At 2.21 am, the president took the stage before a well-lubricated crowd in the East Room and falsely claimed he had won. He vowed to take his case to the Supreme Court.
"We were getting ready for a big celebration," Trump said. "We were winning everything and all of the sudden it was just called off." "We will win this and as far as I'm concerned we already have won it." That was not true.
In fact, 102 million Americans spooked by the pandemic had shattered records to vote early, and millions of ballots had yet to be counted in key battleground states. Neither Trump nor Biden had yet reached the 270 Electoral College votes required to win the presidency. Vote tabulations routinely continue beyond Election Day, and states largely set the rules for when the count has to end.
Biden, too, felt the need to respond to the indecision. Just after midnight, the former vice president's motorcade abruptly shuttled him from his house in Wilmington, Delaware, to an outdoor speaking venue nearby, where he cautioned that a result might not come for a few days. "We're going to have to be patient," Biden said around 12.30 am, as supporters honked their car horns to signal their assent. "It ain't over until every vote is counted." The drama in the wee hours of Wednesday stood in stark contrast to the candidates' more valedictory tones on Election Day.
As voters cast ballots across the country, Trump struck a sober tone at midday Tuesday as he thanked campaign workers at their headquarters in Arlington, Virginia. He also allowed: "You know, winning is easy. Losing is never easy. Not for me it's not."
Biden campaigned a final time in his hometown of Scranton, Pennsylvania, and in Philadelphia, as well as in Wilmington. He spoke to the CEO of a community centre for teens and visited a pool where he worked as a teenager.
President Donald Trump and his Democratic challenger, Joe Biden, are in a tight battle for the White House. Many of the battleground states have yet to be called, including Georgia, Michigan, North Carolina, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin. Trump has won Texas, Florida, Iowa and Ohio, while Biden carried Arizona, New Hampshire and Minnesota. It takes 270 electoral votes to win the presidency.
All the four Indian-American Democratic lawmakers - Dr Ami Bera, Pramila Jayapal, Ro Khanna and Raja Krishnamoorthi - have been re-elected to the US House of Representatives. The 'Samosa caucus', a termed coined by Krishnamoorthi for informal grouping of Indian-American lawmakers, might expand with at least one more as physician Dr Hiral Tipirneni was leading from Arizona district when last reports came in. Meanwhile, filmmaker Mira Nair's son Zohran Kwame Mamdani, a Democratic nominee, has won the election for New York State Assembly, one of two candidates of Indian-origin elected to NY state office.
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