U.S. President Joe Biden is set to deliver an address Thursday about the election results, his first comments since Donald Trump defeated Vice-President Kamala Harris and the Republicans retook control of the Senate, all coming into effect in January.
Biden issued a statement shortly after Harris delivered her concession speech on Wednesday, praising Harris for running an “historic campaign” under “extraordinary circumstances.”
Biden will leave office in January after leading the U.S. out of the worst pandemic in a century — over 2,000 Americans were dying daily during the week of his inauguration — while passing a $1 trillion infrastructure bill and other legislation that will impact communities for years to come. In foreign affairs, Biden galvanized international support for Ukraine in the aftermath of Russia’s invasion.
But voters in exit polls run by multiple news agencies expressed broad dissatisfaction among the electorate about rising costs in the aftermath of the COVID-19 pandemic and concerns about the U.S. immigration system. Biden’s administration and the Harris campaign struggled to assuage the concerns of enough Americans.
Donald Trump is now just the second person in U.S. history to win two non-consecutive presidential terms. The National breaks down how appealing to some swing state voters who don’t typically lean Republican helped push Trump over the top.
Biden ran four years ago against Trump to “restore the soul of the country” — he cited Trump’s equivocating after the Charlottesville riots that erupted after a protest organized by white nationalists — but he will now make way after just one term for his immediate predecessor.
“Maybe in 20 or 30 years, history will remember Biden for some of these achievements,” said Thom Reilly, co-director of the Center for an Independent and Sustainable Democracy at Arizona State University. “But in the shorter term, I don’t know he escapes the legacy of being the president who beat Donald Trump only to usher in another Donald Trump administration four years later.”
The president on Wednesday stayed out of sight for the second straight day, making congratulatory calls to Democratic lawmakers who won downballot races as well as one to Trump, who he invited for a White House meeting that the president-elect accepted.
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Biden, 81, ended his reelection campaign in July, weeks after an abysmal performance in an atypically early presidential debate. He struggled to make the case for his years in office or counter Trump misrepresentations.
The performance sent his party into a spiral and raised questions about whether he still had the mental acuity and stamina to serve as a credible nominee and serve until 86, his age at the end of the next presidential term.
While the circumstances were quite different, Biden became the first incumbent since Lyndon Johnson in 1968 to bow out of a re-election bid. Biden dropped out on July 21 after getting not-so-subtle nudges from Democratic Party power brokers, including former president Barack Obama and former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi. Biden endorsed Harris and handed over his campaign operation to her, allowing her to access a considerable war chest.
Harris managed to spur far greater enthusiasm than Biden was generating from the party’s base. But she struggled to distinguish how her administration would be any different in a campaign about one-quarter of the length of the typical modern presidential nominee.
Harris senior adviser David Plouffe in a posting on X said the campaign “dug out of a deep hole but not enough.”
Trump has vowed to radically reshape the federal government and roll back many of Biden’s priorities, including on climate change. A Republican-controlled Senate will help in that regard, and the House of Representatives could remain under the party’s control as well, with over 30 races still yet to be called.
Government agencies in Biden’s term sometimes found themselves restricted in action by rulings from the Supreme Court. The court has a 6-3 conservative lean, with three of the justices nominated and approved during Trump’s first term in office.