President-elect Joe Biden.Photo: Patrick Semansky/AP/Shutterstock
It’s over and it’s time to move on, President-electJoe Bidensaid inan addressMonday night after the Electoral College had gatheredto officially attestto his victory over PresidentDonald Trump.
“There is urgent work in front of us,” Biden, 78, said, speaking from a podium in Wilmington, Delaware, where he has been preparing to transition to power.
“Now it is time to turn the page as we’ve done throughout our history — to unite, to heal,” he said.
“Once again in America, the rule of law, our Constitution, and the will of the people have prevailed,” he said. “Our democracy — pushed, tested, threatened — proved to be resilient, true and strong.”
Biden gave his speech not long after the final Electoral College votes were cast and he was formally chosen as the 46th president of the United States.
Biden’s speech came some six weeks after the Nov. 3 election between him and President Trump at a time when thenovel coronavirus (COVID-19)pandemic’s latest wave has spread faster across the U.S. than ever before — crossing a grim benchmark of300,000 coronavirus deathsthe same day.
Trump, 74, has continued to protest the election results, claiming without evidence that the race was “rigged” and his second term in office was “stolen” from him through conspiratorial means involving voting machines and numerous accomplices.
State and federal courts — includingthe Supreme Court— have dismissed the president’s legal challenges and local officials from both parties have said they have not found widespread fraud.
On Monday, Biden denounced Trump’s attacks on the election in his most direct language yet, after weeks of brushing off his rival’s resistance to the results.
“They [the legal challenges] were heard again and again,” Biden said.
“In America, when questions are raised about the legitimacy of any election, those questions are resolved through a legal process,” Biden said. “And that is precisely what happened here.”
President-elect Joe Biden.Drew Angerer/Getty Images
Biden also praised the tens of millions of voters who cast ballots this year, reflecting historically high interest in the election even amid the pandemic and social upheaval of 2020.
“If anyone didn’t know it before, they know it now. What beats deep in the hearts of the American people is this: democracy. The right to be heard. To have your vote counted. To choose the leaders of this nation. To govern ourselves,” Biden said.
“American democracy works because Americans make it work at the local level,” he said.
He went on: “One of the extraordinary things we saw this year was these everyday Americans — our friends and neighbors, often volunteers, Democrats and Republicans and independents — demonstrating absolute courage. They showed a deep and unwavering faith in and a commitment to the law. They did their duty in the face of a pandemic, and then they could not and would not give credence to what they knew was not true.”
“They knew the elections they oversaw were honest and free and fair. They saw it with their own eyes,” Biden said. “And they wouldn’t be bullied into saying anything different.”
Trump’s conspiratorial statements in recent weeks have stoked heightened, and at times violent, rhetoric among his supporters, often aimed at election officials in swing states.
“This has to stop,” Gabriel Sterling, a voting systems official in Georgia and self-described Trump-supporting Republican,warnedthis month. “Someone’s going to get hurt, someone’s going to get shot, someone’s going to get killed.”
Biden, who has campaigned in large part as a unifying figure who can cure Trump’s divisive tendencies, echoed that call again Monday.
“It is my sincere hope we never again see anyone subjected to the kind of threats and abuse we saw in this election,” Biden said. “It’s simply unconscionable.”
“It’s a position so extreme we’ve never seen it before — a position that refused to respect the will of the people, refused to respect the rule of law and refused to honor our Constitution,” Biden said, calling the suit an “unprecedented assault on our democracy.”
Politicians “don’t take power,” he said, “the people grant it to them.”
“The flame of democracy was lit in this nation a long time ago,” he said. “And we now know that nothing — not even a pandemic or an abuse of power — can extinguish that flame.”
source: people.com
