Nancy Pelosi called Joe Biden “President-elect” of the United States (File)
Washington:
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, the top Democrat in Congress, on Friday called Joe Biden the “president-elect” of the United States after winning the main election results.
“This morning it’s clear that the Biden-Harris ticket will win the White House,” Pelosi told reporters after Biden overtook President Donald Trump in the potentially decisive state of Pennsylvania.
“President-elect Biden has a strong mandate to lead,” she said.
It is “a happy day for our country. Joe Biden is a unifier because he is determined to bring people together.”
Pennsylvania would be enough to push Biden past the magic number of 270 votes in the state-by-state Electoral College, which determines the presidency.
Biden also took a very fine lead in the votes counted from Georgia, which Trump until the end of the campaign did not consider to be on the line.
The Democrat stopped before declaring victory, but said he expected him and his Vice President Kamala Harris to triumph.
Trump angrily made unsubstantiated allegations of fraud and sought to stop the vote count after prematurely declaring his victory following the close of the poll on Tuesday.
Biden’s performance came despite projections that Democrats would lose multiple seats in the House of Representatives, a major disappointment for the party that had hoped to expand its majority.
Pelosi played down the losses, but said the next House election in 2022 “would be a steeper climb” without Trump on the ballot.
The president’s party almost always loses seats in Congress in the first midterm election.
(Except for the title, this story was not edited by GalacticGaming staff and is posted from a syndicated feed.)
