The New York Times - USA (2020-11-09)

P2 N THE NEW YORK TIMES, MONDAY, NOVEMBER 9, 2020

Election

MAPLEWOOD, N.J. — A late-
morning stillness had settled over
a November Saturday in a cozy
blanket of suburban serenity. Sud-
denly, at stadium-level blast, there
came the shattering rock ’n’ roll
roar of victory:
We will, we will rock you
We will, we will rock you
The sounds of something un-
leashed — banging pots, honking
horns, primal shouts — burst from
all directions in Maplewood, N.J.
And as another Queen song
boomed from the muscular loud-
speakers in his garage, Zack Kur-
land stood at the edge of his drive-
way, arms raised like Rocky.
We are the champions
We are the champions
His wife, Neena Kumar, came
running and leapt into his arms.
News had just arrived that Joseph
R. Biden Jr. had been declared the
winner of the presidential election
of 2020, and now the two were
twirling in an impromptu public
dance of triumph.
The moment evoked an iconic
American image: a World War II
sailor spontaneously kissing a
woman in a nurse’s uniform in
Times Square. Only instead of V-E

Day, this was V-B Day: Victory for

Biden.

But not everyone was dancing.

Triumph in a foreign war unifies a

country; triumph in an election

has the lurking potential to further

divide. And by Sunday morning,

some of the celebration and griev-

ing had melted away to expose a

difficult question for divided fam-

ilies and a divided nation:

Now what?

True, a record number of more

than 75 million Americans had

voted for Mr. Biden, the Democrat-

ic challenger, and his running

mate, Kamala Harris, the first

woman elected as vice president.

Also true was that more than 71

million others now had to grapple

with the concept that their candi-

date — Donald J. Trump, the Re-

publican incumbent — would most

likely be branded by his own worst

epithet: loser.

If Trump loyalists were honking

their horns at all on Saturday, it

was probably to clear Biden sup-

porters from the streets. And the

only hope being offered by their

leader was a vow to challenge what

he asserted, without evidence, was

a fraudulent election.

By refusing, for now, to publicly

accept the election results, Mr.

Trump was all but inviting dance-

interrupting discord. And some ac-

cepted his invitation.

Trump supporters held “Stop

the Steal” rallies outside state capi-

tols across the country, though

their cries of electoral corruption

sometimes came as news of Mr. Bi-

den’s declared victory was lighting

up smartphones everywhere.

In Sacramento, Calif., videos

captured confrontations that de-

volved into physical assaults;

some in the scrum wore the black-

and-yellow polo shirts often associ-

ated with the Proud Boys, a far-

right, pro-Trump group not unfa-

miliar with violence. Another vid-

eo, from Salem, Ore, showed a man

in Proud Boys apparel discharging

what appeared to be pepper spray,

after which a crowd battered a ve-

hicle with fists and a baseball bat.

These small moments reflect the

sizable fissure in the collective

American psyche that Mr. Biden

sought to begin closing in his

speech on Saturday night. With a

stand of American flags behind

him, he said the time had come to

restore the nation’s soul; to em-

brace the first three words of the

Constitution: “We the people.”

Mr. Biden knows from experi-

ence how difficult such simple sen-

timents are to attain. Another his-

toric moment not long ago — the

2008 election of the country’s first

Black president, Barack Obama,

with Mr. Biden as his vice presi-

dent — also prompted dancing in

the streets. And it, too, was framed

as a moment of healing unification.

The feeling did not last.

But Mr. Biden still recognized a

need to sound the call, once again,

for the nation to come together.

“It’s time to put away the harsh

rhetoric,” he said. “To lower the

temperature. To see each other

again. To listen to each other

again.”

His words seemed directed as

much to the individual American

as to the nation at large, as if to rec-

ognize the gaping rifts created

over four tumultuous years.

Friendships have fractured.

Workplace relationships have

cooled. Family gatherings have

been altered by fears that a re-

quest to pass the salt might some-

how lead to a political brawl.

In Trump-solid Mercer County,

Pa., a retired special education

teacher named Beverly Graham, a

Democrat, celebrated the big news

on Saturday by pouring a glass of

honey whiskey. She drank it in qui-

et toast, then tackled the chore of

cleaning the bathrooms.

It has been a hard four years for

Ms. Graham, with various political

disagreements, including with

sons who went from supporting

Mr. Obama to supporting Mr.

Trump. Especially difficult was the

brutal mocking of Democrats — in

other words, people like her — on

social media by members of her

church. Their disdain was so vitri-

olic that she had trouble attending

Sunday services.

That is, when people used to go

to church. Before the coronavirus.

“I just don’t think it’s ever going

to be the same,” Ms. Graham, 65,

said. “Because I felt like it was be-

yond political. It was personal.”

On the other side of Pennsylva-

nia, 300 miles to the east in Monroe

County, a cellphone salesman

named Austin Garone said he was

exhausted by the thought of telling

an ex-girlfriend which way he had

voted.

They had broken up in 2016 over

politics, mostly, after he voted for

Mr. Trump — a choice, he said, she

found incomprehensible. This time

around, she had been calling, tex-

ting and sending long Facebook

missives, all to persuade him not to

vote for Mr. Trump again.

“People just hate Trump so

much,” Mr. Garone, 26, said. “It’s

an emotional reaction and they

lose their sense of reason.”

He said he had told his ex-girl-

friend, still a close friend, that he

would not vote for Mr. Trump if she

could demonstrate that he had in-

fringed upon her rights as a bisex-

ual woman.

Mr. Garone ultimately decided

that the president had not done so.

But he is not volunteering that he

voted for Mr. Trump in 2020.

“If she asks, I’ll tell her,” he said.

“But if not, I won’t mention it.”

And in Louisville, Ky., a lawyer

named Dustin Meek said that she

had spent considerable time trying

to navigate the political schism be-

tween herself, a self-described pro-

gressive Democrat, and her family

in Ashland, her Trump-supporting

hometown 190 miles to the east.

“We’ll start out the evening say-

ing, OK, no discussion of politics,”

Ms. Meek, 54, said. “But inevitably,

a joke will be thrown, or something

will come up and people will poke,

and honestly, I have to say, it has

strained the relationships.”

She and her family members

cannot seem to even agree on what

constitutes “fact,” she said. They

follow right-wing news websites,

while she favors more traditional

news sources that Mr. Trump has

encouraged his followers to dis-

trust.

By Sunday morning, a sem-

blance of serenity had returned to

Maplewood. Mr. Kurland, a digital

designer and a musician whose ga-

rage loudspeakers had rocked his

neighborhood, mowed the lawn.

His wife, Ms. Kumar, a psycholo-

gist, walked the family’s two black

Labradors.

That the president of the United

States was tweeting again about a

stolen election did not perturb

them. They had already danced for

joy in their driveway.

A LOOK AROUND

After the Din of a Decisive Day, a Reassessment of the Nation’s Rifts

By DAN BARRY

A sizable fissure,

captured in small

moments.

Reporting was contributed by
Mike Baker from Seattle; Camp-
bell Robertson from Mercer
County, Pa.; Sabrina Tavernise
from Monroe County, Pa.; and Will
Wright from Louisville, Ky.

ference, but this is a close election,
and we need to acknowledge
that.”
“I look forward,” Mr. Blunt add-
ed, “to the president dealing with
this however he needs to deal with
it.”
At the White House, there was
little indication that Mr. Trump
was dealing with it at all. As he
played a second consecutive day
of golf at his private club outside
Washington, the president recir-
culated a groundless claim by
Newt Gingrich, the former Repub-
lican speaker of the House, who
told Fox News, “I think that it is a
corrupt, stolen election.”
Privately,the president’s advis-
ers, several of whom have quietly
been candid with Mr. Trump that
chances of successfully challeng-
ing the outcome were not high,
had concluded they had little op-
tion but allow the president to
keep fighting until he was ready to
bow to the reality of his loss.
On Friday, a group of them met
with the president in the Oval Of-
fice to discuss the way forward,
giving him a brutally honest as-
sessment of his likelihood of pre-
vailing. After another meeting at
Mr. Trump’s campaign headquar-
ters on Saturday, where political
aides again laid out the small
chances of changing the outcome,
Jared Kushner, the president’s
senior adviser and son-in-law,
asked the group to go to the White
House to outline it for Mr. Trump,
according to people briefed on the
meeting.
Campaign officials continued to
discuss legal strategy for chal-
lenging the results on Sunday and
named Representative Doug
Collins of Georgia, to lead their re-
count effort in the state.
On his first full day as presi-
dent-elect, Mr. Biden kept a low
profile, emerging publicly only to
attend Mass, as he does most Sun-
days. Afterward, he visited the
cemetery where his son Beau; his
first wife, Neilia; and their daugh-
ter, Naomi, are buried. In a sign of
one specific stylistic change com-
ing to the White House, he also
stayed quiet in another way:
Aside from circulating a video
posted by his presidential transi-
tion, he had not sent a single tweet
by Sunday evening.
Leaders around the world sent
their congratulations to Mr. Bi-
den, underscoring the interna-
tional community’s acceptance of
the results, even by those who had
cultivated close personal ties with
Mr. Trump, including Prime Min-
ister Benjamin Netanyahu of Is-
rael and Boris Johnson of Britain.
A few refrained, including the
leaders of Russia and China, Vla-
dimir V. Putin and Xi Jinping.
There were signs that Mr.
Trump would come under increas-
ing pressure to accept the election
results. The nonpartisan Center
for Presidential Transition, a non-
profit that assists in transfers of
power, called on his team to “im-
mediately begin the postelection
transition process.”
“While there will be legal dis-
putes requiring adjudication, the
outcome is sufficiently clear that

the transition process must now

begin,” members of the group’s

advisory board — including Mike

Leavitt, the former Republican

governor of Utah, and Josh

Bolten, the White House chief of

staff under Mr. Bush — wrote in a

letter reported earlier by Politico.

“This was a hard-fought cam-

paign, but history is replete with

examples of presidents who

emerged from such campaigns to

graciously assist their succes-

sors,” they wrote.

Mr. Bush extended his congrat-

ulations to Mr. Biden in a state-

ment issued after the two men

spoke on Sunday.

“Though we have political dif-

ferences, I know Joe Biden to be a

good man, who has won his oppor-

tunity to lead and unify our coun-

try,” Mr. Bush said.

And a former member of Mr.

Trump’s cabinet, Gary Cohn, also

acknowledged Mr. Biden’s victory,

tweeting his “congrats” to “Presi-

dent-elect @joebiden and Vice

President-elect @kamalaharris.”

“With over 145M votes cast,” he

continued, “both campaigns

should be applauded for getting

an unprecedented number of citi-

zens engaged in the democratic

process.”

The silence from most other

leading Republicans cut both

ways for the president. While it al-

lowed Mr. Trump to continue the

fiction that he had not lost, it also

left him to battle against the elec-

tion results without the full, vocal

support of his party behind him.

Senator Mitch McConnell, Re-

publican of Kentucky and the ma-

jority leader, has declined to say

anything since Friday, before the

election results were known,

when he released a generic state-

ment encouraging officials to

“count all the votes.” No member

of his leadership team has either,

apart from Mr. Blunt’s carefully

worded statements on Sunday.

Just two Republican senators —

Mitt Romney of Utah and Lisa

Murkowski of Alaska — and a

handful of House members had

acknowledged Mr. Biden’s win by

Sunday evening, while others

tried to cast doubt on the results.

“Every legal challenge should

be heard,” said Representative

Kevin McCarthy of California, the

House minority leader. “Then and

only then will America decide who

won the race.”

Speaking on Fox News, Mr. Mc-

Carthy questioned why news me-

dia outlets had called the presi-

dential race for Mr. Biden, who

was leading by tens of thousands

of votes in key battleground

states, before learning the final re-

sults of contests in competitive

House districts — many of those

in deep-blue California and New

York — where thousands of mail-

in ballots remain uncounted.

“Why would you call the presi-

dential race first?” he asked.

News outlets call races after an-

alyzing returns and concluding

the outcome is certain, and the re-

sults in the congressional races in

which ballots are still being tabu-

lated — all but a handful of them in

states that Mr. Biden easily won —

have no bearing on the presiden-

tial race.

Still, some Republicans were

grasping for evidence of wrongdo-

ing. Senator Lindsey Graham of

South Carolina urged Mr. Trump

to refuse to concede and fight on.

He acknowledged, though, that a

claim he circulated over the week-

end that a postal worker was said

to have overheard talk of what he

believed was corruption taking

place at a facility in Erie, Pa., re-

mained unverified.

“Do not accept the media’s dec-

laration of Biden,” Mr. Graham,

the chairman of the Judiciary

Committee, said on Fox News on

Sunday morning. He called the

election “contested” and urged:

“Do not concede, Mr. President.

Fight hard.”

Those comments reflected the

advice of some of Mr. Trump’s top

advisers, chiefly Rudolph W. Giu-

liani, his personal lawyer, who

were urging him on Sunday to

continue to fight the results.

A remarkably small number of

Republicans called for the country

to move on and acknowledged Mr.

Biden’s victory. Among them were

three governors of blue states —

Charlie Baker of Massachusetts,

Larry Hogan of Maryland and

Phil Scott of Vermont — and fewer

than a dozen House Republicans.

They included the centrist Rep-

resentatives Tom Reed of New

York and Fred Upton of Michigan;

Representative Adam Kinzinger

of Illinois, who has been an out-

spoken critic of Mr. Trump; and

four lawmakers who will not be re-

turning to Congress next year:

Representatives Paul Mitchell of

Michigan, Will Hurd of Texas and

Francis Rooney of Florida, who

are retiring, and Representative

Denver Riggleman of Virginia,

who lost his primary this year.

On “Fox News Sunday,” Mr.

Romney provided a contrast to

many of his Republican col-

leagues. He said that he believed it

was “appropriate” for Mr. Trump

to pursue recounts and legal chal-

lenges in certain battleground

states, but cautioned against

widespread condemnations of the

American system of elections.

“It’s important for the cause of

democracy and freedom that we

don’t allege fraud and theft and so

forth, unless there’s very clear ev-

idence of that,” Mr. Romney said.

“To date, that evidence has not

been produced.”

Mr. Romney noted that he had

had a legal team ready to chal-

lenge the results of the 2012 elec-

tion when he was the Republican

nominee, but decided not to go for-

ward once he saw such efforts

would be futile.

“At some point, truth, freedom

and democracy have to ascend,”

he said, “and you step aside.”

AFTER THE VOTE

Biden Turns Attention to Transition, While Trump Refuses to Concede

Where Biden Won: 279 Electoral Votes

ELECTORAL

VOTES

PERCENTAGE OF VOTES

COUNTED AS OF

6:58 P.M. EASTERN

BIDEN

VOTES/

PCT. OF TOTAL

TRUMP

VOTES/

PCT. OF TOTAL

Calif. 55 87% 9,174,089 65% 4,745,501 33%

N.Y. 29 84% 3,699,332 56% 2,850,352 43%

Ill. 20 90% 3,025,393 55% 2,333,409 43%

■ Pa. 20 98% 3,358,920 50% 3,315,726 49%

■ Mich. 16 >98% 2,794,853 50% 2,646,956 48%

N.J. 14 80% 2,097,839 58% 1,441,349 40%

Va. 13 >98% 2,391,548 54% 1,961,346 44%

Wash. 12 96% 2,303,430 59% 1,514,563 39%

Mass. 11 93% 2,254,168 65% 1,121,176 32%

Md. 10 80% 1,578,807 64% 860,427 35%

Minn. 10 >98% 1,717,991 52% 1,485,677 45%

■ Wis. 10 >98% 1,630,569 49% 1,610,030 49%

Colo. 9 95% 1,753,416 55% 1,335,253 42%

Conn. 7 97% 1,059,252 59% 699,079 39%

Ore. 7 97% 1,318,475 56% 942,737 40%

Nev. 6 96% 657,248 50% 625,784 48%

N.M. 5 >98% 498,022 54% 400,920 44%

Hawaii 4 >98% 365,802 64% 196,602 34%

Maine* 3 91% 419,309 54% 340,512 43%

N.H. 4 >98% 422,284 53% 365,248 46%

R.I. 4 97% 300,325 59% 197,421 39%

D.C. 3 80% 258,561 93% 14,449 5%

Del. 3 >98% 295,413 59% 199,857 40%

Vt. 3 95% 227,231 65% 111,131 32%

Where Trump Won: 214 Electoral Votes

Te x a s 38 >98% 5,216,321 46% 5,872,348 52%

Fla. 29 >98% 5,294,758 48% 5,667,822 51%

Ohio 18 95% 2,611,377 45% 3,071,959 53%

Ind. 11 >98% 1,239,529 41% 1,727,085 57%

Tenn. 11 >98% 1,139,364 37% 1,849,791 61%

Mo. 10 >98% 1,242,851 41% 1,711,848 57%

Ala. 9 >98% 843,473 36% 1,434,159 62%

S.C. 9 >98% 1,092,518 43% 1,386,207 55%

Ky. 8 98% 777,813 36% 1,342,474 62%

La. 8 >98% 855,630 40% 1,255,528 58%

Okla. 7 >98% 503,890 32% 1,020,280 65%

Ark. 6 >98% 420,985 35% 761,251 63%

Iowa 6 98% 757,699 45% 896,102 53%

Kan. 6 >98% 551,199 41% 753,370 56%

Miss. 6 96% 447,162 39% 683,527 60%

Utah 6 96% 489,465 38% 759,583 58%

Neb.* 4 >98% 367,930 39% 550,231 58%

W.Va. 5 >98% 232,502 30% 539,610 69%

Idaho 4 >98% 286,991 33% 554,019 64%

Mont. 3 >98% 243,714 40% 341,763 57%

N.D. 3 >98% 114,687 32% 234,962 65%

S.D. 3 >98% 150,475 36% 261,108 62%

Wyo. 3 >98% 73,445 27% 193,454 70%

Not Called: 45 Electoral Votes

Ga. 16 >98% 2,465,781 50% 2,455,428 49%

N.C. 15 98% 2,658,274 49% 2,733,681 50%

Ariz. 11 98% 1,643,488 50% 1,626,536 49%

Alaska 3 56% 56,849 33% 108,231 63%

Total 75,380,447 51% 71,107,862 48%

Source: National Election Pool/Edison Research (election results)

Boldface: swing states that were most contested

■ Winning party flipped from 2016

*The number of electoral votes shown for Maine and Nebraska may be fewer than their total

electoral votes because they also award votes to the winner of each congressional district.

WIN: 270

45

214

ELECTORAL 279

VOTE Trump

Not called

Biden

THE NEW YORK TIMES

WYO.

WIS.

TENN.

S.D.

S.C.

PA.

ORE.

OKLA.

OHIO

N.Y.

NEV.

N.M.

NEB.

MINN.

MICH.

MAINE

KAN.

ILL.

IDAHO

IOWA

GA.

FLA.

COLO.

CALIF.

ARIZ.

ARK.

ALA.

WASH.

W.

VA.

VA.

UTAH

N.D.

N.C.

MONT.

MO.

MISS.

LA.

KY.

IND.

TEXAS

ALASKA

VT.

R.I.

N.H.

MD.

D.C.

MASS.

HAWAII

CONN.

N.J.

DEL.

BIDEN

WIN

FLIPPED FROM 2016

Who Won Each State TRUMP NOT CALLED

MAINE 1

NEB. 2

NEB. 3

MAINE 2

NEB. 1

Map shows

Maine and Neb.

statewide vote;

additional

electors by

district:

From Page A1 As of Sunday at 6:58 p.m. Eastern.

Advisers, including

Kushner, try to paint a

realistic picture for a

defiant president.

Reporting was contributed by Pe-
ter Baker, Carl Hulse, Katie
Glueck, Thomas Kaplan and
Kayne Rogers.