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      Biden Urges Unity: ‘We’re at War With the Virus, Not With One Another’

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      WASHINGTON — President-elect Joseph R. Biden Jr. on Wednesday delivered a raw but optimistic address to Americans in his first nonpolitical speech since winning the election, pleading with the nation to “hang on” and have hope even with the number of coronavirus cases spiking across the country and a hard winter on the horizon.“Looking back over our history, you see that it’s been in the most difficult circumstances that the soul of our nation has been forged,” Mr. Biden said, speaking directly to the camera from a stage at the Queen, a historic theater in Wilmington, Del., where he stepped into a void left for him by President Trump, who has been rarely seen since the election.In an implicit repudiation of Mr. Trump, who has dismissed the coronavirus as the flu and mocked people who wear masks, Mr. Biden urged Americans to see it as their patriotic duty to fight the pandemic together by taking the proper precautions. “I know the country has grown weary of the fight,” he said. “We need to remember we’re at war with the virus, not with one another, not with each other.”As he urged Americans to wear face masks, practice social distancing and limit the size of group gatherings, especially around the holidays, he noted: “None of these steps we’re asking people to take are political statements. Every one of them is based on science, real science.”He said he hoped the good news about effective vaccines would “serve as an incentive to every American to take these simple steps to get control of the virus. There’s real hope, tangible hope. So hang on.”In the two and a half weeks since Mr. Biden won the election, he has been spreading a message of unity in an effort to reach the nearly 74 million Americans who voted for Mr. Trump. On the eve of Thanksgiving, he also addressed the pandemic head on with a mix of realism and hope.“Many local health systems are at risk of being overwhelmed,” he said. “That’s the plain and simple truth. Nothing made up, it’s real. I believe you always deserve to hear the truth, hear the truth from your president.” He added, “Each of us has a responsibility in our own lives to do what we can do to slow the virus.”Mr. Biden, aides said, decided about 10 days ago to give a Thanksgiving address as he watched coronavirus cases spiking across the country and thought about how his own typically large family gathering was going to be scaled down this year. (In his speech, he said he would be celebrating at home with his wife, Jill, their daughter, Ashley, and her husband.)Mr. Biden spoke minutes after Mr. Trump called into a hotel gathering of Republican state lawmakers in Gettysburg, Pa., to discuss with them and his personal lawyer, Rudolph W. Giuliani, baseless allegations of voting irregularities in the state. Mr. Trump again claimed he won the election he had lost and demanded that the election results be “turned” in his favor.“This was an election that we won easily,” he said. “We won it by a lot.”The president had intended to appear there in person, but he abruptly canceled those plans after a campaign adviser who had been near Mr. Giuliani tested positive for the coronavirus. Later in the day, Mr. Trump invited some of the Pennsylvania lawmakers to the White House to discuss what a person familiar with the situation said were voting irregularities. Mr. Trump did the same thing with a group of Michigan lawmakers — he pressured them to not certify Michigan’s 2020 election vote, which went for Mr. Biden — but it failed to work.In contrast to Mr. Trump’s feckless efforts to overturn the election results, Mr. Biden praised the sanctity of the vote in his speech and commended Americans for casting their ballots in record numbers despite the pandemic. “Our democracy was tested this year,” he said. “What we learned is this: The people of this nation are up to the task. In America, we have full and fair and free elections. And then we honor the results.”He called voting “the noblest instrument of nonviolent protests ever conceived.”Mr. Trump, in the early days of the pandemic, had tried to brand himself a “wartime president,” before claiming, inaccurately, that the country had “rounded the curve.” Mr. Biden on Wednesday appeared to pick up the wartime mantle, describing the coronavirus pandemic as “a nearly yearlong battle” that has “devastated this nation.”“America is not going to lose this war,” he said, reminding people, “Don’t let yourself surrender to the fatigue.”Mr. Biden also tried to paint an optimistic vision of the future, despite the current crisis, and asked Americans to “dream again.”“We’re going to lead the world by the power of our example, not just the example of our power,” he said. “We’re going to lead the world on climate and save this planet. We’re going to find cures for cancer and Alzheimer’s and diabetes, I promise you.”Mr. Biden’s speech was infused with his own experience of devastating loss, which he often cites when he speaks to a nation that has so far lost more than 260,000 lives to the virus.“I remember that first Thanksgiving, the empty chair, the silence,” he said, referring to the death of his son Beau Biden in 2015. “It takes your breath away. It’s really hard to care. It’s hard to give thanks. It’s hard to even think of looking forward. It’s so hard to hope. I understand.”Mr. Trump had no plans to deliver any holiday message of his own. On Tuesday, he took part in the annual turkey pardon, a White House tradition that counted as one of his only public appearances since the election.On Wednesday, after Mr. Biden’s address, the president announced on Twitter that he had pardoned the first of his four national security advisers, Michael T. Flynn, who had twice pleaded guilty to lying to the F.B.I. about his conversations with a Russian diplomat and whose prosecution Attorney General William P. Barr tried to shut down.Mr. Biden and his aides were trying to treat the last gasps of Mr. Trump’s presidency as a side show. In a conference call with reporters on Wednesday morning, transition officials said the president-elect did not need Mr. Trump to concede in order to carry on with the necessary business before them that began this week after the head of the General Services Administration formally acknowledged the election results.“We do not feel that it is necessary for President-elect Biden to speak with President Trump,” Kate Bedingfield, a deputy campaign manager for Mr. Biden, said on a conference call with reporters. “We believe we’re getting the information our teams need.” More

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      A Conspiracy to Steal the Election, Aided by 80 Million Voters

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      To the Editor:It looks as if Rudy Giuliani was on to something. There is now a growing body of evidence of a vast conspiracy to steal the election from President Trump. Officials at the Department of Homeland Security have confirmed that more than 80 million people conspired to steal the election by voting for Joe Biden.An F.B.I. investigation has determined that planning for the conspiracy began nearly two years ago, and was organized by people at the highest levels inside the Democratic Party, including Bernie Sanders, Elizabeth Warren, Pete Buttigieg, Cory Booker, Amy Klobuchar and, of course, Kamala Harris and Joe Biden. The F.B.I. has video footage of large public recruitment events where these shameless leaders openly asked people to vote for them.Even worse, these diabolical co-conspirators recruited over 73 million people to vote for President Trump, just to create the appearance of a free and fair election. And then — the coup de grâce — they had the audacity to enlist hundreds of election officials from all over the country, including many unwitting Republicans, to count all of the votes.A conspiracy on this scale is unprecedented in the history of our country.Larry HohmSeattle More

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      Biden’s Team, Setting a New Direction

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      To the Editor:Re “Biden Picks Team Set on Fortifying World Alliances” (front page, Nov. 25):Watching President-elect Joe Biden’s news conference on Tuesday brought tears of appreciation, and I wondered why. The voters’ rejection of the dangerous incompetence of Donald Trump is an obvious answer. But it goes deeper.The usual transitions of power and key positions always represent a changing of the guard, a shift of policy, but nothing to warrant an emotional response like the one I experienced. But Mr. Trump so blew up the norms of how government should work to help solve Americans’ problems that now, with real grown-ups coming back in to pick up the reins and the pieces, I felt such a burst of gratitude and pride.This is truly Mr. Biden’s moment. He has long waited in the wings and is now center stage with an excellent supporting cast.Diane GarthwaiteScarborough, MaineTo the Editor:Tuesday’s news conference introducing members of Joe Biden’s team reveals the true toll of the Trump presidency. In order to defeat an autocrat, we have had to settle for a Republican-light team calling for a revival of American “leadership” in the world. “America is back,” Mr. Biden said, “ready to lead the world.”Many of us who had no choice but to vote for Mr. Biden remember all too well what Democratic world leadership meant for Vietnam. We recall Joe Biden and Hillary Clinton voting for the invasion of Iraq.The world’s nations have not elected our country as their leader. We should form fair alliances, energetically participate in the United Nations and at long last stop boycotting the International Criminal Court. We should be good citizens of the world, not its unelected, self-imposed leader. The very idea of “leader of the world” reeks of arrogance, privilege, ignorance and intolerance.Neil MullinMontclair, N.J.To the Editor:Re “A Great Election, Against All Odds” (editorial, Nov. 25):Republicans fear the will of the American electorate. Not so deep down, they know that on policy after policy the majority of voters do not want what the Republican Party stands for. That is why disinformation is a core strategy. That is why they work so strenuously to selectively prevent people they anticipate making choices counter to what Republicans want through voter suppression and partisan gerrymandering, and when things do not go their way, cancel actual votes.Put another way, for Republicans in 2020 democracy is not a soaring principle or constitutional requirement. It is an inconvenience to be discarded when it challenges holding on to power.Arthur H. CaminsBeacon, N.Y.To the Editor:The Times still refuses to acknowledge a crucial reality that many of the 73 million Americans who voted for President Trump understand. There is a significant difference between Mr. Trump’s strong but highly defective persona and his policies. His insistence on opening schools is one significant example, when one weighs the benefits of the in-school experience, especially for younger and poorer kids, against the coronavirus risks.I am dismayed by the considerable damage to our country from four years of wholesale dismissal of “anything Trump” without rigorous evaluation of each policy.Samuel BahnNew York More

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      Markets Throw a Welcome Party of Sorts for Biden

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      A day after the Trump administration effectively acknowledged the election of Joseph R. Biden Jr., investors showed their relief by pushing the two major stock market indexes to all-time records on Tuesday.It was a welcome party of sorts for Mr. Biden, but what investors were really embracing was the end of uncertainty. President-elect Biden has vowed to push for more stimulus to bolster the economy. His selection for Treasury secretary, Janet L. Yellen, is well known from her days as Federal Reserve chair. And several new coronavirus vaccine candidates mean that the pandemic could be under control in the months ahead.President Trump, who on the campaign trail had warned that Mr. Biden’s election would lead to stock market armageddon, on Tuesday implied that the day’s highs were his own doing, making an unscheduled stop at a White House briefing to play up the latest gains in the Dow Jones industrial average.“The stock market’s just broken 30,000 — never been broken, that number,” said Mr. Trump, who has often used the markets as a barometer of his presidency. “That’s a sacred number, 30,000; nobody thought they’d ever see it.” He added: “I just want to congratulate all the people within the administration that worked so hard. And most importantly, I want to congratulate the people of our country, because there are no people like you.”Mr. Trump, who spoke for about 65 seconds, ignored questions from reporters about whether he would concede to Mr. Biden.On Wall Street, the S&P 500 stock index rose 1.6 percent to a new high of 3,635.41, while the Dow rose 1.5 percent, closing above 30,000 for the first time.“We have an enormous amount of certainty that we didn’t have just a few months ago,” said Kristina Hooper, chief global market strategist at Invesco, an investment management firm.The last few months have been a volatile stretch for investors. After hitting a peak on Sept. 2, the S&P 500 began to fall, and — except for a brief uptick the following month — remained roughly 9 percent below the peak until the end of October.One sign of investor anxiety was the volatility displayed in the VIX, an index widely known as Wall Street’s “fear gauge.” The VIX spiked by more than 50 percent in late October as the virus picked up again and the election approached. A meltdown of technology stocks added to the uncertainty. In the last week in October, stocks fell 5.6 percent, the biggest weekly drop since March. Still, stocks were up for the year at the end of last month.And in the weeks since the election stocks have climbed steadily, primarily because of encouraging vaccine news. Pfizer, Moderna and AstraZeneca have all announced that their vaccine candidates showed favorable results in trials. The S&P 500 has risen roughly 8 percent since the election. Some investors believe that with Mr. Biden in the White House, and Republicans likely to retain control of the Senate, they could count on political gridlock to block tax increases that could roil the markets.“You have a Biden administration likely governed by a split Congress and a conservative Supreme Court so it eliminates some of the most extreme policies either on the right or left,” said Michael Arone, chief investment strategist at State Street Global Advisors. “So markets are celebrating that.”The good news about vaccines has bolstered stocks that had been hit hard by the outbreak. Stocks of airlines and oil companies have soared this month. United Airlines, American Airlines and Delta Air Lines have all climbed by more than 30 percent. The oil giant Chevron is up nearly 38 percent. The Russell 2000 — an index of smaller capitalization companies heavily influenced by the shorter-term outlook for the U.S. economy — is up more than 20 percent this month alone.But many analysts believe that the market could have done even better without the political uncertainty about the outcome of the election. The president’s baseless claims that there was fraud in the election and that he would ultimately win a second term helped keep a lid on gains by injecting uncertainty into the markets.The decision on Monday by Emily W. Murphy, the administrator of the General Services Administration, to allow the presidential transition process to move forward made investors feel confident that the election was finally over, Ms. Hooper said. “I think that was creating a significant overhang and raised questions about how long this would drag on,” she said.Markets also appeared to welcome the return of politics as usual under a future Biden administration, and were reassured by the news that Ms. Yellen will be Mr. Biden’s nominee to head the Treasury Department. She is a known quantity on Wall Street, well respected for her steady leadership at the head of the central bank, from 2014 to 2018.“There had been some fear that Mr. Biden would pick a Treasury secretary with a strong anti-Wall Street bias,” wrote analysts with High Frequency Economics in a client note on Tuesday. “Janet Yellen isn’t that.”The markets performed well under Mr. Trump for the most part. Since his election in 2016, the S&P 500 has returned more than 80 percent — including dividend payments. Most analysts credit the administration’s tax cuts — signed into law in 2017 — for a significant part of the gains.But the last four years have also been a volatile period for markets, with multiple sharp, sudden downturns often linked to policies pushed by Mr. Trump, such as his trade war with China, which helped push stocks to a 6 percent loss in 2018.This year, the more than 11-year-old bull market collapsed in March, as the S&P 500 dove nearly 34 percent in a matter of weeks as the virus raged around the globe, before eventually climbing to new highs.Mr. Trump’s style was often at odds with Wall Street’s preferences.He broke with the tradition of virtually all other recent presidents in using the power of the bully pulpit to browbeat individual companies — including Boeing, Amazon, Ford and General Motors — for decisions he disliked, often sending their shares reeling in real time.Even those on Wall Street who might have supported some of the president’s policies often said they could do without his constant Twitter missives weighing in on the markets. (Since his election in 2016 the president has tweeted or retweeted roughly 200 messages on the markets.)“It always bothered me that the president tweeted about the markets,” said Paul Schatz, who manages roughly $90 million in assets for clients largely in New York, Connecticut and Florida. “As an investment adviser in charge of taking care of people’s money, I would rather the president would not wade into those waters.”Michael Crowley contributed reporting. More