Joe Biden says he is on his way to a ‘clear win’ and predicts more than 300 electoral college votes

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Joe Biden all but declared the White House was his Friday night and said he had a real mandate for radical change as he made a brief appearance after plans for a grander victory party collapsed when the presidential race wasn’t called.

‘We’re going to win this race,’ he said inside the Chase Center in Wilmington, Delaware, speaking for seven minutes with running mate Kamala Harris at his side.

Biden hoped to celebrate a presidential victory on Friday but the counting process continues in the key states of Pennsylvania, Georgia, Arizona and Nevada, where he is expanding his lead against President Donald Trump.

Pennsylvania alone would take him to 273 electoral college votes, while if Arizona and Nevada declare before the Keystone state, he would hit 270. If he takes all four – which appears very likely, he would have 302 electoral college votes, the same as Trump, but in contrast, a thumping popular vote majority of more than four million.

Pennsylvania could be called Saturday, as could Nevada and possibly Arizona; Georgia is so close that it is certain to have a recount.

Biden never mentioned Trump directly as he spoke but presented a drastic change of tone, saying that the ‘purpose of our politics isn’t total, unrelenting warfare.’

‘No, the purpose of our politics, the work of our nation, isn’t to fan the flames of conflict, but to solve problems, to guarantee justice, to give everybody a fair shot and to improve the lives of our people.’

‘We may be opponents – but we are not enemies. We are Americans,’ he continued. That didn’t stop him from boasting about wins, however. 

‘One of the things I’m especially proud of is how well we’ve done all across America,’ he told a crowd of socially distanced reporters and staff. ‘We are going to be the first Democrat to win Arizona in 24 years. We are going to be the first Democrat to win Georgia in 28 years.’

‘And we re-built the Blue Wall in the middle of the country that crumbled just four years ago: Pennsylvania, Michigan, Wisconsin.’

Biden did not answer questions on whether Trump should concede. He did indicate he expects a result in the presidential contest on Saturday.

‘I hope to be talking to you tomorrow,’ he said.

He counselled patience as the vote tally continues and anxious Americans wait to learn who will be their next president.

‘I know watching these vote tallies on TV moves very slow and does as low it goes, it can be numbing. Never forget, the tallies aren’t just numbers, they were represent votes and voters. They exercised this fundamental right to have their voice heard. 

‘What’s becoming clearer each hour, is that record number of Americans of all races, faiths, religions, chose change over more of the same. It given us a mandate for action on COVID, the economy, climate change, systemic racism. They made it clear, they want the country to come together, not continue to pull apart. The people spoke,’ he said.

Ironically, minutes after he finished speaking, it was revealed that the White House chief of staff Mark Meadows has become the latest person there to test positive for COVID-19. 

Meadows, 61, was last in the White House on Thursday, CNN reported. 

He would in theory be critical to a handover of power, but Biden indicated that he and Harris have started the transition process without saying whether they had received help from the Trump administration.

‘We are not waiting to get the work done. We are starting the process,’ he said.

And he vowed to bring the country together.

Biden said he believed people were sick of politics being so nasty.

‘No matter who you voted for, I am certain of one thing: the vast majority of those 150 million Americans who voted, they want to get the vitriol out of our politics. We are not going to agree on a lot of issues, but at least we can agree to be civil with one another. We have to put the anger and the demonization behind us it’s time for us to come together as a nation to heal. It’s not going to be easy, but we have to try. 

‘My responsibility as president will be to represent the whole nation and I want you to know that I will work as hard for those who voted against me as those who voted for me. That is the job. That is the job. It’s called the duty of care for all Americans,’ he said.  

Trump is yet to react to Biden’s remarks, however on Twitter he retweeted a series of posts supporting his claims of voter fraud and cheating as he spoke.

Among the tweets was one by co-founder Real Clear Politics Tom Bevan who criticized Fox News’s early call in Arizona, where Biden currently leads by a slim margin. 

Bevan called the move ‘totally unnecessary’while pointing to how they waited hours to make a call in Florida when Trump was up by three points.  

Biden is just 17 electoral votes shy of winning the presidency, while Trump trails behind with 213 electoral votes. 

He currently has a 0.4% lead with 49.6% of the state’s total vote, compared to Trump’s 49.2%. The Associated Press waits for a candidate to have a 0.5% lead to call a race. Anything below that difference would require a recount, as per state law.

Earlier on Friday night, Justice Samuel Alito announced all Pennsylvania counties must segregate ballots that arrived after Election Day, following an appeal lodged by Republicans earlier to exclude those votes from the total count.

Trump’s campaign had filed a motion to intervene in a decision by the state’s highest court that allowed election officials to count mail-in ballots postmarked by Tuesday’s Election Day that are delivered through Friday. 

Alito’s order, however, comes after Secretary of State Kathy Boockvar had already instructed election officials to separate the ballots – limiting Trump’s ability to claim the court order as a victory. 

And whether or not those ballots are ultimately counted seems unlikely to affect who gets the state’s 20 electoral votes now that Biden is leading by more than 27,130 votes.  

The former vice president is on the cusp of winning the presidency with a 0.4% lead over Trump in the state.

As of late Friday, there were approximately 89,000 mail ballots still to be counted in Pennsylvania, with the majority in Allegheny County, the second largest county in the state.

Additionally, there are potentially tens of thousands of provisional ballots that remain to be tabulated, though an exact number remained unclear. Those ballots will be counted after officials verify their eligibility to be included. 

Allegheny, which includes Democratic strongholds of Philadelphia and Pittsburgh, could be what brings Biden to 270 electoral votes. 

He currently has 253, compared to Trump’s 213, meaning he can win the presidency in one of two ways.  

If he wins Pennsylvania, he gains 20 votes and no longer needs either Arizona or Nevada. But if he wins Arizona – which has 11 electoral college votes – and Nevada – which has 6 – he no longer needs Pennsylvania.   

Biden’s plans to address the nation prompted an angry tweet from Donald Trump sent from the White House where he had spent the day reportedly fuming as he watched television and spoke to confidantes. 

His legal path to challenging the election unclear and his mathematical path to retaining power apparently almost closed, Trump railed:  ‘Joe Biden should not wrongfully claim the office of the President. I could make that claim also. Legal proceedings are just now beginning!’

Then he tweeted – apparently somewhat plaintively – that his initial ‘big leads’ had vanished, something which election watchers had predicted for weeks before the election.

‘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.

But vote tallies in Pennsylvania and Nevada showed Biden’s lead – not Trump’s increasing.

In the White House, Trump’s inner circle were scrambling to work out how to tell him he had lost, while he vowed defiantly to pursue legal challenges to the count in a series of states, claiming he was fighting for ‘election integrity,’ the day after an extraordinary 17-minute tirade claiming he was the victim of a ‘conspiracy’ and that counting the votes was part of the ‘fraud.’ 

Biden’s campaign has kept ready an outdoor stage at the Chase Center in Wilmington, Delaware for a primetime address and warned TV networks to be prepared for a speech. 

Close supporters of the VP were tipped off Friday to head to the Chase Center in their vehicles. The Democrats have been holding major events drive-in movie theater style in order to ensure proper social distancing of their crowds. The Chase Center parking lot is where his campaign staged fireworks after he accepted the Democratic nomination during the Democratic National Convention, where the major speeches were moved to Wilmington due to the coronavirus pandemic. If the race is called for the former vice president, the event is expected to look the same. 

The country and the world are waiting for election results from three states; Pennsylvania, Nevada and Arizona.  

One reason for the tightening race is that under Pennsylvania law, elections officials are not allowed to process mail-in ballots until Election Day. 

It’s a form of voting that has skewed heavily in Biden’s favor after Trump spent months claiming — without proof — that voting by mail would lead to widespread voter fraud.

There’s a possibility the race won’t be decided for days and according to CNN, there are about 102,000 ballots left to count. If there is less than a half percentage point difference between Biden and Trump’s vote total, state law dictates that a recount must be held.

Philadelphia Mayor Jim Kenney earlier on Friday said it was time for Trump to ‘put his big boy pants on’ and concede. 

Democrats had long considered Pennsylvania a part of their ‘blue wall’ — a trifecta that also includes Wisconsin and Michigan — that for years had served as a bulwark in presidential elections. In 2016, Trump won each by less than a percentage point.

Biden, who was born in Scranton, claims favorite-son status in the state and has long played up the idea that he was Pennsylvania’s ‘third senator’ during his decades representing neighboring Delaware. He’s also campaigned extensively in the state from his home in Delaware. 

Trump cannot win on Pennsylvania alone; with 214 electoral college votes, he’d still need to pick up either Georgia, North Carolina, Arizona or Nevada – the four other states where a result is yet to be officially confirmed.

Earlier on Thursday, Kathy Boockvar told CNN’s Jake Tapper: ‘I think there’s about 550,000 some odd — you know, plus or minus — ballots that are still in the process of being counted today.

‘Some of those may have already been counted but are not yet uploaded. But yeah, they’re coming in. We’re getting 10,000 here, 20,000 here, counties are furiously at work.

Pennsylvania said it would continue counting mail-in ballots until Friday so long as they were post-marked from November 3.   

Meanwhile, Trump had sued Pennsylvania to undermine whatever election result is returned.

Voting was temporarily halted in Philadelphia and Pittsburgh on Thursday as a result of the legal row.

A judge intervened and dismissed the federal motion.

In Nevada, there are only around 51,000 votes left to call before Friday and they say they need that much time. 

Arizona also says they need until Friday to deliver a result on their remaining 450,000 votes. 

The Trump campaign had a brief legal victory in Pennsylvania on Thursday when a judge ruled ballot observers can watch officials count ballots within six feet. 

Representatives of both campaigns were in the room to watch the counts but at a further distance because of the coronavirus. A county judge agreed with the Trump campaign, but the state Supreme Court rejected it.

The situation in Pittsburgh is complicated by about 30,000 outstanding ballots, where a vendor sent the wrong ballots to voters and had to reissue new ballots with the correct races.

Poll workers now have to examine these ballots to make sure that people don’t vote twice, or, if they sent in the wrong ballot, they didn’t vote in races they aren’t eligible for.

They cannot legally be counted until Friday when Allegheny County, where Pittsburgh sits, swears in a special board to examine these ballots, as required by law

Trump’s team of lawyers have filed lawsuits on multiple fronts – to try to stem the flow of presumably pro-Biden mail ballots into the system, and to try to force greater access for observers so they presumably can challenge more individual ballots.

They scored an initial win Thursday morning, which former Florida Secretary of State Pam Bondi, a Trump backer, brandished at a press conference.

The ruling, by the Commonwealth Court of Pennsylvania, reverses a decision by the Court of Common Pleas of Philadelphia. It lets Trumps observers ‘be permitted to observe all aspects of the canvassing process, within 6 feet, while adhering to all COVID-19 protocols, including wearing masks and maintaining social distancing’.

On Twitter, Trump touted it as a: ‘Big legal win in Pennsylvania!’

But then the Supreme Court of Pennsylvania almost instantly struck it down when Democrats appealed. 

The reason of the appeal was not concern over the watching itself, experts said, but because Democrats say Republicans accepted the rules on watching before they went into effect.

Conceding that the rules could be changed after they had been agreed would open the way to more rules being changed, they argue.

That is not the end of the road for the Trump campaign. The big battle, with a greater potential to affect the count, could come in an effort to challenge an earlier Supreme Court decision allowing the state to count mail-in ballots that come in three days after Election Day.

Conservative justices had indicated that it could get another hearing should these ballots that get counted later prove decisive.

But a decisive win by Biden with votes that came in before Election Day would undercut the need for the suit – and Biden was chipping away at Trump’s lead with hundreds of thousands of ballots outstanding.

Pennsylvania Democrats, mindful of potential challenges and alarmed by reports the Republican-controlled legislature might seek to intervene, have been segregating mail-ballots that come in later to prevent the state’s entire result from being thrown out.

Pennsylvania’s Attorney General blasted the move on Thursday.

‘That question is a question of state law,’ he said, noting it was decided by the state supreme court. ‘It was decided that those ballots and they will be counted,’ he told CNN.

‘We’re following the law here in Pennsylvania here. We’re counting these legal votes,’ he said.