Somtochukwu

President-elect Joe Biden will address the nation Monday night and say it’s ‘time to turn the page’ on the election, as Electoral College electors confirm he’s the winner throughout the day. 

The Biden-Harris transition team released two portions of Biden’s 7:30 p.m. speech, which he’ll deliver from Wilmington, Delaware.  

‘In this battle for the soul of America, democracy prevailed,’ Biden will say. ‘The flame of democracy was lit in this nation a lot time ago. And we now know that nothing – not even a pandemic – or an abuse of power – can extinguish that flame.’ 

The president-elect’s speech will revolve around democracy, but he’ll also speak about the coronavirus crisis – the good vaccine news, but also the gruesome milestone of hitting 300,000 deaths in the U.S. 

‘What beats deep in the hearts of the American people is this: Democracy,’ Biden will say. ‘The right to be heard. To have your vote counted. To choose the leaders of this nation. To govern ourselves.’

‘In America, politicians don’t take power — the people grant it to them,’ the president-elect will say.  

Biden’s ‘abuse of power’ comment was a clear whack at President Donald Trump, who still refuses to concede the election. That upset Rep. Paul Mitchell – an outgoing conservative Republican – so much that he left the party Monday, saying he’ll be an independent during his final weeks in Congress. 

‘This election simply confirms for me that it’s all about power first, and that, frankly, is disgusting and demoralizing,’ Mitchell said on CNN. 

The latest Trump campaign plot, articulated by White House aide Stephen Miller Monday morning, was to have Republican ‘electors’ gather in or near the statehouses where the actual Electoral College electors were meeting, to cast their own votes for Trump.  

‘As we speak, today, an alternate slate of electors in the contested states is going to vote and we’re going to send those results up to Congress,’ Miller said on Fox & Friends. 

‘This will ensure that all of our legal remedies remain open. That means if we win these cases in the courts, we can direct that these alternate electors be certified,’ he added. 

In Georgia, a group of Republicans indeed met in a separate room in the state capitol and cast ballots for Trump. In Michigan, a group of Republicans tried to do the same thing, but were refused access to the capitol. The Pennsylvania GOP said they had gathered to cast ballots ‘at the request of the Trump campaign.’

But even Bernie Comfort, the Pennsylvania chair of the Trump campaign, admitted the vote wasn’t much more than a stunt. 

‘We took this procedural vote to preserve any legal claims that may be presented going forward,’ Comfort said in a statement. ‘This was in no way an effort to usurp or contest the will of the Pennsylvania voters.’  

And despite these shenanigans, Biden will call the election a success.

‘We the People voted. Faith in our institutions held. The integrity of our elections remains intact,’ Biden will say. ‘And so, now it is time to turn the page. To unite. To heal.’  

Miller’s claim that ‘legal remedies remain open’ flew in the face of reality. Trump had seen the bid by Texas to overturn the election thrown out by the Supreme Court Friday and spent the weekend angrily tweeting that the nine justices lacked ‘wisdom and courage.’

And on Monday, the Wisconsin Supreme Court ended yet another Trump lawsuit against the results there, another defeat for the president who has seen dozens of lawsuits struck down since voting went against him. 

By just after 5pm Monday, Biden will officially become president-elect, sealing a victory which saw him take 81,282,376 votes compared to Trump’s 74,222,576 in the popular vote.

His victory was declared by major television networks on November 7, but has still not been acknowledged by Trump, who instead has spent more than a month furiously claiming the election was ‘rigged’ or ‘stolen’ and racking up dozens of defeats in court, with the Supreme Court hammering a nail in his coffin last Friday. 

The Electoral College vote leaves Trump’s path to overturning the result one which is now essentially impossible: he will have to persuade both the House and the Senate to throw out the votes of the swing states. 

Among those voting Monday, Hillary and Bill Clinton who are Electoral College electors in New York. Also, former Georgia gubernatorial candidate Stacey Abrams, widely credited for Biden’s win in the state.

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