US elections 2020

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      Who will fill Kamala Harris's Senate seat in California?

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      With Kamala Harris officially headed to the White House, a fresh political battle in her home state of California looms: who will fill her US Senate seat?California law allows the governor to appoint a replacement to serve the remainder of Harris’s term, and speculation over whom Gavin Newsom will nominate has been swirling for months.A range of politicians have been pitching themselves for the position – Newsom this summer joked with a reporter who asked if candidates had approached him: “You may be the only one who hasn’t – unless you just did.”Top contenders include Alex Padilla, California’s secretary of state, and Xavier Becerra, the state’s attorney general, either of whom would be the first Latino senator from California if appointed. Representatives Karen Bass of Los Angeles, who was a contender for the vice-presidential nomination, and Ro Khanna, who represents the Silicon Valley area, have also been singled out as strong candidates by political strategists.“This is going to be a huge, huge challenge for the governor because he’s got an embarrassment of riches,” said Nathan Barankin, Harris’s former chief of staff.Newsom’s decision could shape the US Senate for years, as whoever fills the seat would face re-election with the huge advantage of incumbency. And California senators can wield an outsize influence in Washington, said Aimee Allison, who heads She the People, a national network seeking to elevate women of color to political leadership.“If there’s one thing that was clarified during the Trump years it is that the policy and political leadership coming from California have been key in providing resistance,” said Allison.As a freshman senator from the nation’s most populous state, Harris played a key role in the hearings of two supreme court justices, and brought her sharp, prosecutorial style to interrogations of several Trump administration officials.Whoever takes her place in the Senate next could help shape how the US legislates on “reparations, the housing crisis, immigration”, Allison said.Newsom will probably seek to appoint an ally in Washington, Barankin said. However, it is unlikely he will find a candidate with whom he shares the same bond he has with Harris.Newsom and Harris came up together in California politics – he was the mayor of San Francisco while she was district attorney, and he served as lieutenant governor while she was the state’s attorney general. “Going through this common political and public life experience at the exact same time binds them together,” Barankin said. More

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      How Georgia built on legacy of a civil rights titan and finally tilted blue

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      Downtown Atlanta boarded up when it became clear that Georgia could decide the fate of Donald Trump by just a few thousands votes one way or the other.The city worried that the president might unleash his well-armed supporters against an unfavourable result or that Trump’s opponents might turn out in protest if Georgia’s Republican establishment got up to its old shenanigans of fixing elections.But as the counting dragged on, the streets stayed quieter than usual, although coronavirus had already taken its toll on city life. When the results finally began to put Joe Biden in the lead in Georgia, his supporters held off on the celebrations. This was the wrong year to tempt fate.But there was a lot of quiet satisfaction that a state whose most significant role in presidential elections until now was as the home of Jimmy Carter, the 39th president, might prove instrumental in the toppling of the US president.“I’m glad I voted. Didn’t last time but we needed rid of that guy. I’m proud of Georgia!” said Martin Williams, on his way to work at a fast food restaurant an otherwise empty city street early Saturday morning.That is a widely held sentiment among Trump’s opponents who sometimes cast his defeat – although a recount was announced on Friday – in terms of a sweet revenge in a state he won by five points in 2016.After trailing for days in the Georgia count, Biden was finally tipped into winning territory by votes from Clayton County, represented in Congress for years by the civil rights titan John Lewis, a fierce critic of Trump who died in July.“I love the idea that Clayton County could put Biden over in GA. That’s John Lewis’ district. He would do one of his trademark happy dances in heaven. Symmetry,” former Senator Claire McCaskill tweeted.Ben Crump, the lawyer who represents the families of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor and other African Americans killed by police, tweeted a reference to Lewis’s mantra of causing “good trouble” in the fight for rights. More

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      Biden's win marks the end of Trump's war on democracy and truth

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      Joe Biden has been elected the 46th US president, signalling a return to political norms in America after four years of raucous populism and administrative turmoil under Donald Trump.
      Thousands of Americans took to the streets, cheering, banging pots and pans and honking car horns to celebrate the outcome after four anxious days of waiting for votes to be counted. Trump was at his golf course in Virginia when the result was announced and refused to concede.
      Biden claimed the victory in the state where he was born, Pennsylvania, whose 20 electoral college votes put him over the threshold of 270. He had more than 74m votes in total, higher than any other presidential candidate in history.
      The former senator and vice-president said he was “honored and humbled” by the people’s verdict. “With the campaign over, it’s time to put the anger and the harsh rhetoric behind us and come together as a nation,” he said in a statement. “It’s time for America to unite. And to heal.
      “We are the United States of America. And there’s nothing we can’t do, if we do it together.”
      Biden was due to address the nation from Wilmington, Delaware, on Saturday evening.
      From Atlanta to New York, from Philadelphia to Washington, there were spontaneous explosions of joy. A crowd gathered on Black Lives Matter Plaza outside the White House, cheering and holding balloons depicting Trump’s face and hair. One person brandished a sign that, quoting Trump on his reality TV show The Apprentice, proclaimed: “You’re fired!”
      In Times Square, New York, people danced, whooped and punched the air at the realisation Trump would be consigned to the history books as an impeached one-term president. More

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      'Don't be ridiculous': Rudy Giuliani learns about Biden win from reporters – video

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      Rudy Giuliani, Donald Trump’s personal attorney, was holding a press conference baselessly disputing the legitimacy of the US presidential election when news filtered through that Joe Biden had been declared the winner. 
      ‘Who was it called by?’ Giuliani asked, referring to the broadcast news networks. ‘All of them,’ replied a reporter. The former New York City mayor insisted the result could not be called until the Trump campaign’s legal challenges had gone to court.
      The path to Joe Biden’s victory: five days in five minutes – video highlights
      US election live: Joe Biden wins and says ‘It’s time for America to unite’
      Rudy Giuliani: from hero of 9/11 to leader of Trump’s last stand More

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      The three counties in three states that were the touchstones for the election

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      Philadelphia County, PennsylvaniaThis county, the state’s most populous with more than 1.5 million inhabitants, is coterminous with the city of Philadelphia. Residents cast about 750,000 votes in the election, favouring Biden over Trump by 81%-18%. It was 30,000 pro-Biden votes from the county, declared at about 9am on Friday, that overturned Trump’s state-wide lead, which on Tuesday night had looked impregnable.The shift, potentially worth 20 electoral college votes, added vital momentum to the Democratic candidate’s push for the White House. The county is at the heart of the Black Lives Matter movement – it is about 43% African American and 45% white. Supporters were involved in protests against the police killings of George Floyd in Minnesota and a local man, Walter Wallace, who was shot in October.Trump repeatedly dismissed nationwide BLM protests, insulted and mocked demonstrators, and sent troops to suppress them. Now they paid him back. Exit polls show African-Americans in Pennsylvania, representing 8% of all voters, backed Biden by 92%-6%. The Hispanic/Latino community, 4% of all voters, backed him by 78%-18%. Although the two minorities’ total numbers were relatively small, so was Biden’s margin of victory.Clayton County, Georgia More

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      Biden lost Florida but he helped raise the minimum wage there. Policy matters | Greg Jericho

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      In this presidential election it was easy to think that policy did not matter.
      After all, Trump did not have any policies. Literally. The easiest way interviewers could trip him up was to ask what he would do with the next four years. His only answer was “we’re going to be great again”.
      If asked what he would do specifically, he answered a version of “well, we’re specifically going to be great again”.
      And yet policy did matter. It always does.
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      In Florida, a vote was held to raise the state minimum wage to $15 over the next six years, from its current rate of $8.56.
      It was a policy Donald Trump outright rejected in the second presidential debate and Joe Biden strongly supported.
      It needed 60% support to pass and it made it, in a state where Biden only got 48% of the vote.
      And so around 12% of voters voted for a policy Biden supported, but then didn’t vote for him to be president.
      Now clearly there are many more reasons to vote for a president than just their position on the minimum wage. But the important aspect of this is not that it shows Biden should have had a better ground game.
      In the far too early wash-up, commentators overreacted before the votes had all been counted and looked at Michigan, Wisconsin and Pennsylvania and rushed to claim Biden failed because he was too “woke” (never actually defined), and needed to be more centrist.
      And then the votes kept being counted, and they all looked a bit silly.
      The thing is, Biden is actually quite socially progressive.
      He took a while to get there, but as vice-president he actually came out in support of marriage equality before Barack Obama did.
      He also this year has strongly supported transgender rights, replying to the mother of a transgender child in his NBC town hall that “the idea that an 8-year-old child or a 10-year-old child decides, ‘you know I decided I want to be transgender. That’s what I think I’d like to be. It would make my life a lot easier.’ There should be zero discrimination.”
      He said in 2012 that transgender rights were the “civil rights issue of our time” – that is well ahead of many in his own party.
      And he won Michigan and Wisconsin – states that are your stereotypical blue-collar workers states.
      Guess what? If they like and trust you, they will go with you.
      Biden also has a strong climate change policy because, bizarrely for a Democratic candidate, he became more progressive after securing the nomination. His energy plan includes a commitment for complete carbon-free power by 2035.
      Alas the Senate, if it retains its Republican majority, will do everything it can to stop him, but again, he did not race to the centre during the election, and yet he did not lose the centre.
      Climate change is real, but you can’t win the debate if people truly don’t think you believe that is the case because you hedge about coalmines.
      Yes he lost Florida, but the people won. Workers there will be seeing a raise in the minimum wage. And this is why progressive parties must keep pushing progressive policies – they change the country and improve lives.
      Four years ago the move to raise the wage to $15 was still something Hillary Clinton could fudge, whether she really supported it or not. But grassroots organisations kept pushing, Bernie Sanders pushed, lobby organisations such as “Florida For A Fair Wage” kept pushing.
      This time around Biden was full-throated in his support, as is the entire Democratic party. And even in a state where Biden lost, over 60% voted in favour of it.
      So yes, Biden lost that state, but that pushing and advocacy meant the policy won.
      Policy matters, not because it might affect an election result but because it affects people’s lives – and that is something progressives should always fight for. More

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      'I can't stop crying': joyful celebrations erupt in US as Joe Biden beats Trump

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      As news broke that Joe Biden had defeated Donald Trump in the race for the White House, cities across the US saw wild celebrations from supporters of the Democratic nominee for president.
      In Philadelphia, the biggest city in Pennsylvania, the state where Biden was born and which sealed his electoral college victory, celebrations erupted outside the convention center where votes were being counted.
      Donna Widmann, a teacher who helped get her students and their families registered to vote, told the Guardian she had not been able to stop crying.

      “I remember four years ago, watching, you know, on 21 January 2017, him getting inaugurated,” she said, referring to Trump’s installation as the 45th president after his shock victory over Hillary Clinton. “And just crying … just watching [Barack] Obama leave and just crying. I feel like so much, so much emotion has happened in the past four years, man, and it just feels really good – like I can’t stop crying.”
      Windmann, who was holding a sign saying Trump should “take the L”, said she was “psyched” for her students and her families to know they made a difference.
      Alice Sukhina, who is from Ukraine, said she had volunteered for the Biden campaign. She had not been able to see her family in four years, she said, adding that she had sent them messages saying that the wait would soon be over.
      “I am overwhelmed with happiness,” she said. “I’m just so ready to get some real progressive things done. I’m ready to push the platform of Democrats to the left.”
      Marissa Babnew said she was “utterly excited for the first time in a very long time” and added: “I’ve had a lot of close experiences with this pandemic because of my work, and I’m finally feeling hopeful.”
      In Manhattan, where Trump made his fortune in real estate but where he remains a highly controversial and deeply divisive figure, crowds flocked to public spaces including Washington Square Park.
      Uptown, in Washington Heights, two friends, both actors, celebrated in Bennett Park, the sight of a key battle in the American revolutionary war.

      “Our long national nightmare is over,” said Paul DeBoy, happily quoting Gerald Ford’s famous message to the nation after the resignation of Richard Nixon in 1974.
      Ward Duffy said the cheering out of apartment block windows, banging of pots and pans, and cars honking in the streets represented “a different celebration than this summer’s respectful salutes to frontline workers” during the coronavirus pandemic.
      “This had a visceral explosion of relief and joy,” he said.
      Cheering, honking and banging of pots and pans erupted in Harlem too. More