WILMINGTON, DE- Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden urged Americans to be patient and projected confidence that he will win the election in a press conference on Wednesday afternoon.
Mr. Biden spoke for 10 minutes as he urged the American people to be calm and made clear no matter what, all the votes would be counted.
“After a long night of counting, it is clear that we are winning enough states to reach 270 electoral votes needed to win the presidency,” Biden said. “I am not here to declare that we have won. But I am here to report when the count is finished, we believe we will be the winners.”
Mr. Biden is projected to win both Michigan and Wisconsin, two states he’s built as part of his “blue wall”. As of this writing, he has 253 electoral votes and is 17 away from clinching the election win. The former Vice President also leads in Nevada, a state he needs to hold, and Arizona, a state that could flip from red to blue.
“Now, every vote must be counted,” Biden said. “No one is going to take our democracy away from us, not now, not ever.”
The Democratic nominee used the time to shift focus to after the election, seeking to put the harsh rhetoric and division behind, giving hope for a new direction and asking everyone to come together as a country.
“Once this election is finalized and behind us, it will be time to do what we have always done as Americans, to put the harsh rhetoric of the campaign behind us … to unite, to heal, to come together as a nation,” Biden said. “I know this won’t be easy. I’m not naïve, neither of us are. I know how deep and hard the opposing views are in our county on so many things, but I also know this as well, to make progress, we have to stop treating out opponents as enemies.”
Mr. Biden’s remarks are a stark contrast from President Trump’s earlier in the day, where he claimed the election was rigged and Democrats were trying to “steal” the win from him.
However, the Biden campaign has repeated said they believe the largely mail-in votes left to be counted are in their favor. Mail-in ballots are still being counted in Pennsylvania and Georgia, where Mr. Biden is expected to be narrow Mr. Trump’s lead.
“If at some point he arrives before the Supreme Court with a novel proposition that ballots that were lawfully cast by eligible voters, but not yet counted by the time Donald Trump wanted them counted — that somehow they don’t count anymore, he will be in for one of the most embarrassing defeats a president ever suffered before the highest court of the land,” Biden adviser Bob Bauer said.
