Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden didn’t crown himself the next commander in chief during a brief national address, but he did crow about winning the popular vote.
“I’m not here to declare that we’ve won, but I am here to report, when the count is finished, we believe we will be the winners,” Biden said Wednesday in Wilmington, Delaware.
In his second speech since polls closed late Tuesday, Biden claimed the hard-fought 2020 election demonstrated that democracy was still “the heartbeat” of the nation.
But the two-term vice president and 36-year Delaware insisted he was on course to notch 270 electoral votes shortly after the Associated Press called battleground Wisconsin in his favor.
With a lead in Michigan, Biden said he felt “very good about Pennsylvania,” particularly because he and running mate California Sen. Kamala Harris had a 78% success rate in ballots cast by mail. He also said he and Harris had “flipped” Arizona, though results from that state are disputed.
Biden then turned to the popular vote, saying only three other campaigns before he and Harris had defeated an incumbent president.
“Sen. Harris and I are on track to win more votes than any ticket in this country that ever won the presidency and vice presidency: over 70 million votes,” he said.
Borrowing from his stump speech, Biden reiterated that he intended to be an “American” president, imploring the country not to see one another as “enemies.”
“Once this election is finalized and behind us, it’ll be time for us to do what we’ve always done as Americans: Put the harsh rhetoric of the campaign behind us, to lower the temperature, to see each other, to listen to one another,” he said.
But Biden ended on a more adversarial note.
“No one is going to take our democracy away from us, not now, not ever,” he said. “We, the people will not be silenced. We, the people will not be bullied. We, the people will not surrender.”
Biden has 248 electoral votes to President Trump’s 214 electoral votes. While the Trump campaign has indicated they will contest the results in Michigan and Pennsylvania, there are a number of states whose returns are still outstanding. Those states include Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, North Carolina, and Pennsylvania.
