Joe Biden set to become the 46th president of the United States

https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/2020-election/biden-defeats-trump-win-white-house-nbc-news-projects-n1246912

https://www.cbsnews.com/news/joe-biden-wins-2020-election-46th-president-united-states/

https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/joe-biden-apparent-winner-presidency/story?id=73981165&cid=clicksource_4380645_3_takeover_2_headlines_hed

https://www.cnn.com/politics/live-news/trump-biden-election-results-11-07-20

Well, we got multiple places calling it for Biden and Harris, after a tense few days. Thank goodness enough people came out to vote Trump out of office, and big thanks to each and every single person who fought for themselves and others to make sure everyone got to cast their ballot.

Of course, it doesn't end here. There's still the matter of the Senate seats still up for grabs, we still need to contend with Trump for another two months, we have to hold the Biden administration to their word, and we have to keep fighting for progress. But at least this is a step in the right direction.

I'm thrilled he got elected. I have spent most of this week checking and rechecking election results, even when it was becoming more and more obvious that Trump had lost and Biden had won.

However

I don't want to rain on anyone's parade, but the electoral college hasn't officially declared Biden the next president yet. That won't happen until sometime in December. And Biden won't be sitting in the oval office until January. Until then, Trump is going to try every slimy trick he can to have another term or worse. I'm not going to break out the figurative champagne until Trump and his cohorts are out of the executive office and Biden and Harris have, uh, drained out the swamp.

The most important thing to take away from this is that your vote does, indeed, matter. Last time around, there was this widespread attitude that your vote doesn't really matter and the electoral college actually decides everything. This isn't the case. Go VOTE. Vote in your local elections. Vote in your state elections. Vote in every election you can. And please, please, please, take the threat of a demagogue and their followers seriously. I didn't, many of us didn't, and the entire world has paid the price for it.

Next month, Georgia is having a special election for two senators. If both are Democrats, then they will have the majority in the senate and Mitch Mcconnell will be unable to block everything that Biden tries to get through Congress.

GO VOTE. Next time and every time!

I'm happy, but also fucking exhausted. That after four years of extreme corruption and cruelty, over seventy million of my fellow citizens wanted...more of this...is devastating. Having been born in '90, the back half of my childhood was in the post 9-11 period where the Republican party (and their voters) grew increasing bold in their behavior, so when the mask finally came off in 2016, I wasn't that surprised; I thought myself somewhat prepared. After seeing their numbers only swell after nearly half a decade of this rampant monstrosity of an administration I've learned that I really wasn't prepared for this.

I take solace in the fact that even with their boosted numbers, they're still the minority. Please continue to vote, folks. There's what can only be described as an evil in America, and it's not going away just because Biden won. They have to be repelled at every turn, in every election, in every vote. Apathy is not, has not, and will not ever be a luxury we can afford.

I am more excited at Trump losing than Biden actually winning but for today only never mind all of that. I'm content to enjoy the moment and all of the dunking taking place.

Yeah glad trump's gone and that's enough to be happy about for a day. It was wild walking around NYC today and seeing everyone outside shouting and cheering, celebrations happening spontaneously, cars honking. Such a stark contrast to 2016 post-election when it felt like the entire city lost their best friend (not saying hillary was the friend; just a feeling of deep genuine sadness in everyone you encountered).

My wife and I have been ecstatic. There's a long ways to go to fix the issues we have in this country, and who knows what's going to happen with the senate... but we at least feel more comfortable about the future now. There's at least a chance to not just devolve further. I know Trump's going to go down kicking and screaming, but with this announcement I feel like I can at least take a breath for now. He'll file his lawsuits, try to squeeze every bit of corruption out of whatever rule he can find, but for the first time in awhile I'm actually feeling proud of what we accomplished.

Whether it was voting against trump or voting for biden, getting past his rhetoric and inflammatory support is an accomplishment. Personally I'm not in a State that was ever going to go blue, but I'll just take the satisfaction of knowing that I tallied a number up there to say enough is enough.

Good riddance to bad rubbish. Here's to 4 years of trying to push Biden as far to the left as possible.

@justin258: I'm also familiar with that TED talk and in turn some of the "extra innings" that were mentioned, so I'm also not celebrating until January 20th. And even still, the dirty sheets need to be taken care of after the multiple times that Trump and his cohorts have shat the bed.

Biden winning is a victory be it small or big, but we/Americans still have a long way to go.

Donald Trump has largely fucked up the important part of a coup where you build up an allied base and instead opted to personally insult almost everyone around him at every possible moment. As such I do not have much actual concern over these fears of him leaving the office willingly.

I'm also largely torn on whether or not I think he will spend his remaining time with as much petty vengeance as possible or just being a sad sack sore loser whining on twitter every hour and getting countless frivolous lawsuits thrown out.

As Rep Ilhan Omar said when asked how she felt when trump made the Minnesota vote a referendum on her, "He fucked around and found out." I'm so relieved that trump lost.

I’m pretty sure he screamed that entire speech at me. 🤣

Democrats probably won't get the Senate, the Supreme Court is still 6-3 in favor of neanderthal idiots, and repugs are still in charge of a whole lot of state governments. Meaning they'll continue to gerrymander and suppress the vote with zero fear of the SC doing a damn thing about it.

Also, 70+ million Americans witnessed the last four years and decided that dirtbag deserved a second term. So, yeah...

this.

I'm not too worried about Trump. He'll spend the next few months whining and moaning and probably try every pathetic trick he can come up with to magically make it so he won, but I'm not too concerned that he'll find any way to actually stay in office.

I am worried about his radical supporters though. They have the potential to do some real harm if they're not willing to accept that he lost, and I won't be surprised if Trump tries to stoke those fires to boost his own ego. I'm really not looking forward to the coming months.

From someone in the ‘not-United States of America’ part of the world, good hustle America, you did good this time. Shame you’ll never get rid of your goofy-arse electoral college system though, or institute mandatory voting for that matter.

This is only the beginning of a very long road we cannot stop fighting. Next up getting as many far left progressives into as many levels of government as we can. Time to bury the republican party in the ground until it's nothing but dust and bone.

Four years ago, people who thought that a Trump presidency would be laughable weren't too worried about it either. And then he was president.

That's not to say that I'm still in anxiety-mode, or that I'm not relieved. I'm definitely relieved, and it does look like he won't be able to get away with much of anything over the next two months. Pretty much all of the litigation he's already tried has been chucked out the window by every judge who has had to deal with it and it seems like his allies are dwindling down rather quickly. Still... I just can't quite relax all the way just yet.

His radical supporters are going to be a problem but, more importantly, there's an emboldened extreme right (read: fascists) who saw themselves in power and who are going to want to be there again. A few of those sorts might actually be competent, and that's what I'm most afraid of. I do think he should be tried for his crimes, but that might just empower his fanbase further.

But hey, I'm happy to see people dancing in the streets over Trump losing office. America needs those people to remember how they feel right now and remember to check up on politics - local, state, and nationwide - as often as possible. And vote.

Fuck yeah.

I’m planning on taking 6 months off minimum from internet forums, news sites and politics in general. I recommend everyone make similar plans, we all need a detox.

@justin258: I don't think those are really comparable situations. Trump became president because people underestimated how many stupid people live in America that are easily brainwashed by rhetoric. It wasn't because he was some master tactician that accomplished the impossible and then pulled the rug out from us after the election.

My biggest worry was that he still had enough fanatical supporters to vote him into the Whitehouse. But now we're past the point where he can leverage them to succeed (hopefully) so now all he has left is his own buffoonery.

The rest of the republican party that is now going to be vying for power are definitely going to be a problem, as always, but I don't think many are going to go to bat for Trump's limp shenanigans at this point.

while i'm relieved the utter cretin appears to be on his way out, joe's politics don't match my own so i'm not exactly thrilled. i voted for him because it was necessary. i am grateful, however, to have seen AOC on my ballot and to have her represent my district.

i don't know what to do about the 70 million that voted for that fucker, though. 2024 will be brutal.

The lesser evil and all that. But this is the real world and we don't get the benefit of taking the witcher's path of neutrality. Voting is, at best, about harm reduction. I believe that a Biden administration will cause far less harm than a Trump administration.

We can celebrate and be happy this week and on January 20.

The work continues.

It was way too fucking close. I don't know how to fix them but there are things that are broken in this country: let's not let them fester for another 4 years because if they do, I'm sure we'll suffer the consequences in 2024.

Totally echo the part thanking everyone for voting and/or getting out the vote.

As a non American I'm both glad and saddened by Trump losing.
Glad you won't have a petty manchild clown as a president and sad you won't have a petty manchild clown as a president.
He did make me laugh.

@ulfhedinn: Yo I'm sure you're probably not being all that serious with this but even considering that..

This sentiment fuckin' sucks.

It will all be for not if we don’t secure both Georgia Senate seats in January. Even if you don’t live in Georgia, try to get people who do live there to vote. Campaign and donate money if you can. And for the love of god VOTE in the midterm elections from here to eternity!

The right man won. The problem now is Biden won't be in office until late January. Any attempt to contain the coronavirus in the United States has long gone.

Trump's response to losing has been something else, though. What a spiteful, sour shite.

Biden's not as bad as Trump but for the rest of the world there will be no difference. US foreign policy never changes whether its democrat or republican. But who knows, maybe now they'll add an obligatory BLM sticker on the bombs you drop in the middle east.

@seventytwotransformations: Brexiteers rather hashed out a deal with a cheerleading Trump administration than having to work things out with an administration that has no love for the project. Where Trump couldn't give a scooby doo about the Good Friday agreement, and Mike Pompeo 'Trusts UK to get this right' ,Biden has straight up said: "Any trade deal between the US and UK must be contingent upon respect for the agreement and preventing the return of a hard border. Period.”

Naturally up till now it's all talk and no action, but it's much easier to trample all over international agreements when you know that the guy you want to be in business with, doesn't mind that you did that.

@seventytwotransformations: People of color, the LGBTQ community, immigrants, and many others would have to give you a hard disagree.

@mathematics: womp womp

While I'm not American, as a humble Canadian I'm proud of ya America, you made the right choice. Now if ya live in Georgia vote in the runoffs!

Biden got the most votes in US history. That’s awesome! I'm glad to see that level of participation. Keep it going into the Georgia runoffs and beyond. Every vote matters every time!

Trump got the second-most votes in US history. Fuckin' what?!

I'm shocked / angry / sad that after four years of this Nazi clown shitting in the Oval that 70 million of my fellow Americans voted for him again! I'm not sure how to move forward with this reality.

On one hand I agree with Biden’s sentiment that it's time to unify and heal. That’s what civilized people should say. That’s what a progressive people would hope to accomplish. I truly hope he succeeds.

On the other hand, I'm over appeasing my conscience by trying to reach out in solidarity only to be told “fuck your feelings”. Trump weaponized the willfully ignorant and rallied the alarmingly large number of hateful bigots that call themselves Americans. They tried to turn this country into a fascist state. They don’t deserve to be mothered; they deserve to be crushed until there’s nothing left of Trump’s cult and their Republican enablers but dust.

It’s a paradox of tolerance that I think I'll be struggling with for some time.

I went downtown to Chicago this weekend, and there was an impromptu victory parade on Saturday. People of all ages just ecstatic throughout the city. A bunch of people in front of Trump Tower popping out of their sun roofs dancing and holding signs and cheering. It was wonderful.

@shorap: As Rep Ilhan Omar said when asked how she felt when trump made the Minnesota vote a referendum on her, "He fucked around and found out." I'm so relieved that trump lost.

I like her, and she's right, and so are you!

The euphoria on the streets and in people's homes looks like a fascist regime was just overthrown. Because it was. A lot to be done (and that was true regardless of which not-Trump won), but it'll be such a relief when that bigoted piece of shit isn't just setting all the oxygen in the air (and also the entire government) on fire all the time.

@bane I'm shocked / angry / sad that after four years of this Nazi clown shitting in the Oval that 70 million of my fellow Americans voted for him again! I'm not sure how to move forward with this reality.

This is totally fair, and I'm with this too. Tuesday night was a motherfucker, and felt like a majority of this country had been slapped in the face again. And even though the final outcome ended up better than it looked like it might that night, it's going to smart for a long time. Lot of work still, regardless of who won.

@mathematics: Why are you mad? You told people to have fun on election night. They did.

Conspiracy theories, misinformation, or distortion about elections and voting will not be tolerated.

I feel like I can finally exhale after four years of holding my breath. Lot's of work left to do, but right now we celebrate.

Lot's of people have commented that they can't believe that 70M Americans still voted for the other guy, but there were some powerful anti-democratic forces at work. Propaganda works.

At any rate we still had ~80M voting age Americans sit this one out so we need to expand enfranchisement.

I'm happy with outcome. I wanted a calm, serious, and decent moderate who will be constructive with those that are not. This is who he appears to be.

As much as this seems like a victory I feel like this is more of a band-aid to stop the hemorrhaging as a palliative rather than the cure. Biden is still pretty right so I feel like a lot of democrats voted against trump rather than for Biden.

There's obviously the immediate problems of getting Trump to concede rather than continue to fuck around and file for lawsuits, and being the sore loser that he is I actually can't picture him giving a concession speech. And without that, his fanatics won't concede either and will be even saltier and that's concerning. If they were ready and willing to use illegal tactics in the name of their glorious leader without him asking, I worry what they'll do if they think they can be the ones to "save the election" for him.

And then after that I don't know how much Joe will get done, but actually siding with science and getting COVID under control should at least be a lob ball that will earn him some points. I don't know how this works but in 2024 can the democractic party have another member run for presidency or is Biden/Harris automatically locked in to try for a 2nd term? I don't know what the odds are for AOC running for 2024 but based on her recent interview it seems like the hostility from even within DNC has gotten her down and disillusioned with american politics :(

My views are certainly more aligned with AOC's/Bernie's than with Biden's, but I think if this election has told us anything, it's that a more progressive ticket was never going to win in 2020, and I think the same will probably still be true in four years.

My intuition is that 2016 was about "establishment" vs. "outsiders" (with people on both sides of the aisle leaning toward the latter), and that in that environment, Bernie as the Democratic nominee might have actually won. But in 2020, four years of Trump had so poisoned our political discourse that a more progressive candidate became impossible. The fact that the GOP gained House seats even as they booted Donald's ass out speaks to that. Probably most harmful of all to the party generally was the "Defund the police" rallying cry, which is an excellent idea but a crappy slogan because it's so easily misunderstood by right-leaning people.

The two Georgia Senate seats are obviously going to be huge. If the Dems actually win them both, they can push DC statehood through and gain a perpetual mortal lock on two more Senate seats, which seems likely to shift the balance of power significantly for the immediate future. If not... well, mid-terms almost always see the president's party lose congressional seats, and then it'll be on to 2024, where anything can happen.

The incumbency advantage is such that the Dems would be crazy not to run Biden again, with the caveat that he'd have to still be healthy. I mean, the dude is gonna be 81 in 2024, and he had surgery for a brain aneurysm thirty years ago. So it's not, like, out of the realm of possibility that he dies in office, or that it becomes obvious to all that he's not healthy enough to do the job anymore (safe bet the GOP will argue that Biden's senile in 2024 regardless of whether it's true or not, but if he's, ya know, actually senile at that point, that would be a problem). At that point I really don't know what the Dems would do. But Harris would probably become the default option. I wish I had faith that racism/sexism in America was such that a person who's both non-white and female could win a presidential election, but sadly I don't really see it happening in the next few cycles. I'd love to be wrong!

I really do wonder if there will be a kind of detox from Trump that sees the GOP returning to being a slightly more sane party, or if it will all just get worse. I think that's anybody's guess.

@lanechanger Thankfully, the concession is just a formality; come January 20, 2021, Biden will be president no matter what. Now, there are other things to be worried about, like whatever other executive orders / pardons / stunts Trump pulls or how the General Services Administration isn't giving the Biden-Harris team the resources to begin a transition of power, but overall the inauguration will happen with or without Trump. His base becoming violent in response to his loss is a valid concern, and I hope that people stay safe through whatever they may do.

With regards to 2024, the Democrats are not locked into Biden-Harris for that year. Someone else can get nominated as the presidential candidate that year if they get enough support. I remember Biden saying he's willing to step down after one term to make way for a new voice, so I'm optimistic.

Donald Trump out here launching a Crusader Kings plot with no backing.

@atheistpreacher: Personally, I wouldn't be surprised of Kamala Harris ends up being an unusually active VP, if for no other reason than Biden's age gives a non-zero chance she might actually take office at some point in the next four years. She might also end up being a useful bridge between the left-wing of the party and the center.

I voted for Biden, but I am a centrist who is very much not a fan of Bernie/AOC wing of the party. I tend to think they are a much bigger plus for the Republicans as a bete-noir than they are for the Dems, and however logical and well intentioned their message, I don't trust them to put it out in a non-obnoxious way that won't fire up the rednecks.

Harris might be the bridge candidate in that scenario. She was pretty far left of Biden in the primaries, which would appeal to the left wing, but she still gives off pretty "establishment" vibes, so people like me aren't frightened away.

@therealturk: I'm happy to agree to disagree on actual policy in a progressive vs. centrist Democrat scenario. Unfortunately, I still think the fact that Kamela Harris has the unmitigated gall to be both non-white and a woman at the same time dooms her for at least the next couple of general elections as far as the top of the ticket goes. I'd love to be wrong! Personally I like Harris (more than Biden). As you point out, she's managed to mostly successfully toe the line between various factions of the Democratic party, which isn't an easy thing to do.

Unfortunately, he seems to have more backing than he should for this sort of thing. I'm not sure that we are out of the woods yet.

nobody wins

We'll give a try this time around, probably, but while I can't ask you to engage with/research our political system's stupidity, even if a plurality of Americans want it gone, the regressives know if it goes: they will LITERALLY never win another Presidency.

Democrats have won the popular vote in 5/6 of the last presidential elections in 20 years (the 1/6 was post-9/11 and President W. Bush STILL only clinched 50.3% of the popular vote).

I don't live in the states of have any family or friend living there but I got pretty emotional when it became clear Trump wasn't going to get re-elected. it just came as a huge relief or something, like 4 years of incomprehensible absurdity that I couldn't reconcile with was finally over.