Presidential campaign 2020 continues Thursday on the second day after voting. Not unexpected but sad.
The divided nation that went to the polls in record numbers brought their steadfast partisan differences to an election that, sadly, will not help unify America.
Challenger Joe Biden, a long-serving Senator and former vice president during Barack Obama’s two terms, appears closest to reaching 270 Electoral College votes, but counting continues and embattled incumbent Donald Trump is already filing legal challenges to an outcome that is not final.
In Georgia, where Trump appeared to be cruising to a win, the count is less than 1 percent apart with two percent of the vote uncounted. Some media outlets, including Trump-leaning Fox News, have called Arizona for Biden, putting Biden 6 Electoral College votes away from a contested win.
This election is far from over.
While a Biden win is considered a step towards restoring some calm to a tense nation, the anger and partisan split in the nation continues. A Trump win is considered an open gate to more rancor and divisiveness.
Writes Phillip Rucker and Robert Costa:
Biden is on track to comfortably win the popular vote, and even if he amasses enough of a majority in the electoral college to become the nation’s 46th president, he would lead a bitterly divided country, having fallen short of the resounding repudiation of Trump that many political strategists believed was necessary to extinguish the political fires the president has lit.
Indeed, Republicans who yielded their identity as a political party to Trump appear to have won affirmation from some voters. The GOP was poised to maintain its slim majority in the Senate and to gain seats in the House, leaving Democrats with a narrower majority in that chamber.
That leaves the nation potentially heading toward a period of entrenched partisan warfare, even as it is battered by crises.
“This is a democracy at full work, but clearly very divided,” Jim Doyle, a former Democratic governor of Wisconsin, tells The Washington Post. “We are clearly very, very divided by cities and rural, we’re very divided by race. Just look at Wisconsin’s map. And we can’t just be demonizing each other. This is a challenge of leadership that has been building for some time.”
He adds: “Joe Biden has to rise to the occasion almost to FDR, as a Democrat might say, or to Reagan, as a Republican might say, proportions. Half the country are not horrible, racist, mean-spirited people who are different from everybody else. It can’t be. And roughly half the country voted for Trump.”
As the politico battle continues, American hit an alarming level in the COVID-19 Coronavirus pandemic: More than 100,000 new daily infections in a disease that has killed more than 220,00 in the United States.
“We’re in for a whole lot of hurt,” said Dr. Antony Fauci, the nation’s top infectious disease expert.
Pain, be it health or political, is the order of the day.
As the battle continues, American hit an alarming level in the COVID-19 Coronavirus pandemic: More than 100,000 new infections in a disease that has killed more than 220,00 in the United States.
“We’re in for a whole lot of hurt,” said Dr. Antony Fauci, the nation’s top infectious disease expert.
Pain, be it health or political, is the order of the day.
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