Joe Biden now faces the tough job of undoing the ongoing damage of Donald Trump’s toxicity
By Rosie DiManno Toronto
President Joseph R. Biden Jr. President-elect-Joe.
After biding his time for more than three decades, twice rejected by his own party as Democratic nominee, bestirred from semi-retirement, the 77-year-old former senator and former vice-president has surmounted the heights of the Oval Office. No. 46, presumptively. A sane and measured president after the hysterical derangement of his conspiracy-cocooned predecessor.
America will have a new commander-in-chief, grandfather-in-chief, healer-in-chief, reconciler-in-chief. All the roles Biden must embrace in these end days of Donald Trump darkness. The mad sitting president in the attic, still dropping bomblets of defiance and laying down fire for a scorched-earth litigious resistance.
Finally, on Day 5 of this interminable United States election, the crucial tumbler locked into place — Pennsylvania, with its 20 Electoral College votes — unlocking the White House. And no scale-proof fence can prevent Biden from occupying it. Just before the penny dropped, at 11:30 a.m. Saturday, Biden’s sister Valerie Biden Owens, told reporters: “It’s a wonderful thing for us but it’s a better thing for America.” Shortly thereafter, the president-elect issued a statement. “I am honored and humbled by the trust the American people and in Vice-president Harris.”
Kamala Harris, first biracial woman to become veep of the U.S. Married — which would make him Second Dude? — to a Jew. “In the face of unprecedented obstacles, a record number of Americans voted,” Biden’s statement continued. “Proving once again that democracy beats deep in the heart of America.
“With the campaign over, it’s time to put the anger and the harsh rhetoric behind us and come together as a nation. “We are the United States of America. And there’s nothing we can’t do, if we do it together.” A unifying message, which, predictably, went right over Trump’s head.
The sitting president was on the golf course when the long-awaited news broke. He too issued a statement, typically toxic.
“We all know Joe Biden is rushing to falsely pose as the winner, and why his media allies are trying so hard to help him. They don’t want the truth to be exposed.” It is Trump who has exposed himself for the zillionth time as a man of no decency, no morals and definitely no grace in defeat. He has always lived in an alternate reality world, a super-spreader of fake news.
The sitting president’s puppet and personal lawyer, Rudy Giuliani — oh, how far he’s fallen since he was anointed Mayor of America during the 9/11 crisis — said in Philadelphia of Trump: “Obviously he’s not going to concede.”
Nevada fell into the Biden column as well, an outlier state for the Democrats where the party had built a potent political machine over the past decade. Arizona did the same. Knotted Georgia will undergo a recount and senatorial runoff, which could decide the composition of the Senate and whether Republicans will retain control.
But Pennsylvania was the big prize, when CNN at last called it Saturday, first among the networks to do so. Fitting too that the tale of the tape was stretched across Philadelphia, crucible of American democracy. Along with Wisconsin and Michigan, Biden had resurrected the Blue Wall that had been knocked down by Trump’s wrecking ball four years ago against Hillary Clinton.
The drip-drip-drip of county returns had accumulated over the previous four days, while a country on the razor’s edge was a-roil with anxiety.
However exasperatingly, with some ugly episodes of intimidation outside counting offices across the country, the system worked. Democracy, which the autocratic Trump had turned on its head, worked. Even as Trump’s legal functionaries churned out more lawsuits. Even as Trump spokesfolks continued to avow that the “election is not over,” as Matt Morgan, lawyer for the Trump camp, had warned on Friday: “The false projection of Joe Biden as the winner is based on results in four states that are far from final.”