Biden wins White House, ending Trump presidency

Democrat Joe Biden has won the White House, US media said Saturday, defeating Donald Trump and ending a presidency that convulsed American politics, shocked the world and left the United States more divided than at any time in decades.

CBS, NBC and CNN news networks announced the result just before 11:30 am (1630 GMT) as an insurmountable lead in Pennsylvania took Biden, 77, over the top in the state-by-state count that decides the presidency.

"America, I'm honored that you have chosen me to lead our great country," Biden said in a statement. 

"The work ahead of us will be hard, but I promise you this: I will be a president for all Americans — whether you voted for me or not. I will keep the faith that you have placed in me."

Trump quickly responded to the announcement by accusing Biden of falsely declaring himself the next president.

"We all know why Joe Biden is rushing to falsely pose as the winner, and why his media allies are trying so hard to help him: they don't want the truth to be exposed," Trump said in a statement.

"The simple fact is this election is far from over."

For Biden, who got more than 74 million votes, a record, the triumph after a tense contest conducted during a global coronavirus pandemic was the crowning achievement of his half century in US politics, including eight years as deputy to the first Black US president Barack Obama.

The result condemned 74-year-old Trump -- who made frantic attempts to claim fraud and stop the vote count -- to becoming the first one-term president since George H. W. Bush at the start of the 1990s.

The Republican, whose marathon press conferences, tweeting and raucous campaign rallies have made him a perpetual, noisy presence at home and abroad over the last four years, had no immediate reaction.

But ever since the night after Tuesday's election, when he prematurely claimed victory, Trump has been inhabiting a world increasingly disconnected from the reality of his approaching downfall.

Earlier Saturday, he left the White House for the first time since Election Day to play golf, tweeting: "I WON THIS ELECTION, BY A LOT!"

And in an extraordinary White House address to the nation on Thursday -- with Biden's lead in the partial results already consolidating rapidly -- he claimed "they are trying to steal the election."

Despite Trump's protests, the returns from vote counting offices around the country kept coming all week, with no credible reports of irregularities.

And when US television networks declared that Biden had taken an insurmountable lead in Pennsylvania, that put the Democrat over the magic number of 270 electoral college votes. Trump had no way back.

- Centrist in divided era -

The biggest ever turnout of voters -- some 160 million people, according to preliminary estimates -- poured out across the United States, ultimately favoring Biden's promise of calm to Trump's rollercoaster.

An old school centrist, Biden has fended off the energetic leftist wing of his party, while choosing Kamala Harris, the first Black woman on a major party presidential ticket, as his running mate.

Although a career politician -- a widely derided group today -- he is seen by many as a sympathetic character, humanized by having endured the loss of his wife and baby daughter in a car accident in 1972, then another son to cancer four decades later.

Yet despite his fervent promises to restore America's "soul," Biden will inherit a shaken, angry country.

Americans are bitterly split after an election campaign in which Trump deliberately stoked divisions over many of the country's most sensitive issues, including race, immigration and gun ownership.

And despite critics painting Trump as an aberration, he still won the votes of around 70 million people -- many of whom may not have liked Trump himself, yet consider Democrats as being out of touch with their traditional values.

That gulf in understanding between two Americas will likely continue to rage in Congress, threatening Biden's ability to govern at a time of economic upheaval and an accelerating coronavirus crisis.

- Humiliation -

For Trump, the defeat and his exit from the White House at the transition on January 20 will above all be a story of personal humiliation.

He shocked the country and the world when he stormed to victory in 2016 as a political newcomer taking down the seasoned Democrat Hillary Clinton in his first shot at public office.

Then for much of his administration he appeared invulnerable to the normal laws of politics.

His showbiz style of running the government made him perhaps the most watched -- and controversial -- individual on the planet.

He survived impeachment, tore up diplomatic norms, and was so omnipresent in the media that he lodging himself in the consciousness of ordinary Americans in a way never previously experienced.

A former reality TV star and celebrity real estate developer, he gave the impression of someone who always got his own way.

To crowds at rallies he loved to boast "we're going to win so much, you're going to be so sick and tired of winning." And to people he didn't like, his go-to insult was "loser." 

Yet now he's a loser himself -- as perhaps he already feared on the morning of the election.

"Winning is easy," he mused as polls opened. "Losing is never easy. Not for me."

- Pro-Biden or anti-Trump? -

Biden secured his win by recapturing the Midwestern states of Pennsylvania, Michigan and Wisconsin -- traditional Democratic territory that Trump had flipped in 2016 with his powerful appeal to white, working class voters.

The Democrat was also running slender majorities as vote counting approached an end in Arizona and Nevada, while the tally in Georgia was so close that the state declared it would hold a recount.

But it was the capture of Pennsylvania that sealed the deal, meaning that even if Trump somehow won all the other unannounced states he still wouldn't accumulate enough electoral college votes.

Biden built his campaign on driving inroads into Trump's working class base, while selling himself to the rest of the country as the responsible, steady leader needed to confront the Covid-19 crisis.

Rejecting Trump's erratic, often cavalier attitude to a virus that has killed more than 230,000 Americans, Biden promised to follow scientific advice and take the tough decisions needed to try and halt the pandemic.

He took a gamble, politically speaking, by not holding the traditional kind of mass rallies that Trump used to great effect, insisting that he wanted to set an example by following government guidelines on social distancing.

His campaign even held back from knocking on doors -- another basic, even essential tactic for rounding up supporters that Trump's team embraced to great effect.

And in a climate of ferocious political partisanship, where almost every aspect of life is now seen through Democratic or Republican lenses, Biden pledged repeatedly to "be a president for all Americans."

In many ways, though, the election was less about Biden, making his third presidential run, than a referendum on Trump -- a figure of hate for opponents and open adoration to his supporters.

Some Republicans pleaded for Trump to expand his coalition with a more moderate pitch aimed at independent voters. But this most polarizing of presidents took the opposite tack, focusing his energy on super-charging his core base.

In the last weeks before the election, Trump addressed rally after rally with extreme, often entirely fact-free speeches. He painted illegal immigrants as murderers and rapists, claimed that Biden opposed God, and said Democrats would strip Americans of their personal firearms and allow mobs to destroy suburbs.

"We love you!" the crowds chanted back.

Confronted with pre-election polls that pointed to his coming defeat, Trump appeared genuinely unable to comprehend what was happening.

"Running against the worst candidate in the history of presidential politics puts pressure on me," Trump said.

"Could you imagine if I lose?"

Agence France-Presse

Looking for a winner, US Democrats keep Biden and Sanders on top: poll

NEW YORK -- Former Vice President Joe Biden and US Senator Bernie Sanders remain the top candidates for the Democratic presidential nomination as potential voters appear increasingly interested in picking a winner this year instead of someone who shares their interests, according to a Reuters/Ipsos poll released on Thursday.

The national public opinion poll found that Biden has a slight advantage among registered Democrats, though Sanders has the most support when independents are factored in. While each state sets its own rules for picking the party's nominee, two of the early primary states - New Hampshire and South Carolina - allow independents to participate.

According to the Jan. 8-9 poll, 23 percent of registered Democrats said they supported Biden, while 20 percent supported Sanders and 15 percent said they would vote for US Senator Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts.

Former New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg was backed by 8 percent of registered Democrats and 7 percent supported Pete Buttigieg, former mayor of South Bend, Indiana.

None of the other candidates received more than 3 percent, and another 13 percent of registered Democrats said they do not know which candidate to support.

The top 5 candidates remained the same when independents were factored in, though Sanders had a 2 percentage point advantage over Biden among the larger group.

Sanders also was picked by the largest share of Democrats and independents as the best steward of the environment and economy, as well as the candidate who would be the best at handling the country's healthcare system.

Biden, however, was largely considered to be most likely of all of the candidates to beat Trump in a general election.

The perception that Biden is the most electable could play a bigger role this year as the party picks a nominee. According to Reuters/Ipsos polling over the past few years, Democrats appear to be increasingly interested in simply finding a candidate who can win in the November general election.

According to the poll, 15 percent of Democrats said the main reason they were supporting a particular candidate was because they felt that candidate could win. In comparison, only 7 percent of Democrats said that in a similar poll that was conducted in August and September of 2015.

The Reuters/Ipsos poll was conducted online, in English, throughout the United States. It gathered responses from 1,116 adults in all, including 479 Democrats and 144 independents. It has a credibility interval, a measure of precision, of 5 percentage points.

To view the full poll results, click here.

source: news.abs-cbn.com

Facebook keeps policy protecting political ads

SAN FRANCISCO — Defying pressure from Congress, Facebook said on Thursday that it would continue to allow political campaigns to use the site to target advertisements to particular slices of the electorate and that it would not police the truthfulness of the messages sent out.

The stance put Facebook, the most important digital platform for political ads, at odds with some of the other large tech companies, which have begun to put new limits on political ads.

Facebook’s decision, telegraphed in recent months by executives, is likely to harden criticism of the company heading into this year’s presidential election.

Political advertising cuts to the heart of Facebook’s outsize role in society, and the company has found itself squeezed between liberal critics, who want it to do a better job of policing its various social media platforms, and conservatives, who say their views are being unfairly muzzled.

The issue has raised important questions regarding how heavy a hand technology companies like Facebook — which also owns Instagram and the messaging app WhatsApp — and Google should exert when deciding what types of political content they will and will not permit.

By maintaining a status quo, Facebook executives are essentially saying they are doing the best they can without government guidance and see little benefit to the company or the public in changing.

In a blog post, a company official echoed Facebook’s earlier calls for lawmakers to set firm rules.

“In the absence of regulation, Facebook and other companies are left to design their own policies,” Rob Leathern, Facebook’s director of product management overseeing the advertising integrity division, said in the post. “We have based ours on the principle that people should be able to hear from those who wish to lead them, warts and all, and that what they say should be scrutinized and debated in public.”

Other social media companies have decided otherwise, and some had hoped Facebook would quietly follow their lead. In late October, Twitter’s chief executive, Jack Dorsey, banned all political advertising from his network, citing the challenges that novel digital systems present to civic discourse. Google quickly followed suit with limits on political ads across some of its properties, though narrower in scope.

Reaction to Facebook’s policy broke down largely along party lines.

The Trump campaign, which has been highly critical of any attempts by technology companies to regulate political advertising and has already spent more than $27 million on the platform, largely supported Facebook’s decision not to interfere in targeting ads or to set fact-checking standards.

“Our ads are always accurate so it’s good that Facebook won’t limit political messages because it encourages more Americans to be involved in the process,” said Tim Murtaugh, a spokesman for the Trump campaign. “This is much better than the approaches from Twitter and Google, which will lead to voter suppression.”

Democratic presidential candidates and outside groups decried the decision.

“Facebook is paying for its own glowing fake news coverage, so it’s not surprising they’re standing their ground on letting political figures lie to you,” Sen. Elizabeth Warren said on Twitter.

Warren, who has been among the most critical of Facebook and regularly calls for major tech companies to be broken up, reiterated her stance that the social media company should face tougher policies.

The Biden campaign was similarly critical. The campaign has confronted Facebook over an ad run by President Donald Trump’s campaign that attacked Joe Biden’s record on Ukraine.

“Donald Trump’s campaign can (and will) still lie in political ads,” Bill Russo, the deputy communications director for Biden, said in a statement. “Facebook can (and will) still profit off it. Today’s announcement is more window dressing around their decision to allow paid misinformation.”

But many Democratic groups willing to criticize Facebook had to walk a fine line; they have pushed for more regulation when it comes to fact-checking political ads, but they have been adamantly opposed to any changes to the ad-targeting features.

On Thursday, some Democratic outside groups welcomed Facebook’s decision not to limit micro-targeting, but still thought the policy fell short.

“These changes read to us mostly as a cover for not making the change that is most vital: ensuring politicians are not allowed to use Facebook as a tool to lie to and manipulate voters,” said Madeline Kriger, who oversees digital ad buying at Priorities USA, a Democratic super PAC.

Other groups, however, said Facebook had been more thoughtful about political ads than its industry peers.

“Facebook opted against limiting ad targeting, because doing so would have unnecessarily restricted a valuable tool that campaigns of all sizes rely on for fundraising, registering voters, building crowds and organizing volunteers,” said Tara McGowan, chief executive of Acronym, a non-profit group that works on voter organization and progressive causes.

Facebook has played down the business opportunity in political ads, saying the vast majority of its revenue came from commercial, not political, ads. But lawmakers have noted that Facebook ads could be a focal point of Trump’s campaign as well as those of top Democrats.

Facebook’s hands-off ad policy has already allowed for misleading advertisements. In October, a Facebook ad from the Trump campaign made false accusations about Biden and his son, Hunter Biden. The ad quickly went viral and was viewed by millions. After the Biden campaign asked Facebook to take down the ad, the company refused.

“Our approach is grounded in Facebook’s fundamental belief in free expression, respect for the democratic process and the belief that, in mature democracies with a free press, political speech is already arguably the most scrutinized speech there is,” Facebook’s head of global elections policy, Katie Harbath, wrote in the letter to the Biden campaign.

In an attempt to provoke Facebook, Warren’s presidential campaign ran an ad falsely claiming that the company’s chief executive, Mark Zuckerberg, was backing the reelection of Trump. Facebook did not take the ad down.

Criticism seemed to stiffen Zuckerberg’s resolve. Company officials said he and Sheryl Sandberg, Facebook’s president, had ultimately made the decision to stand firm.

In a strongly worded speech at Georgetown University in October, Zuckerberg said he believed in the power of unfettered speech, including in paid advertising, and did not want to be in the position to police what politicians could and could not say to constituents. Facebook’s users, he said, should be allowed to make those decisions for themselves.

“People having the power to express themselves at scale is a new kind of force in the world — a Fifth Estate alongside the other power structures of society,” he said.

Facebook officials have repeatedly said significant changes to its rules for political or issue ads could harm the ability of smaller, less well-funded organizations to raise money and organize across the network.

Instead of overhauling its policies, Facebook has made small tweaks. Leathern said Facebook would add greater transparency features to its library of political advertising in the coming months, a resource for journalists and outside researchers to scrutinize the types of ads run by the campaigns.

Facebook also will add a feature that allows users to see fewer campaign and political issue ads in their news feeds, something the company has said many users have requested.

There was considerable debate inside Facebook about whether it should change. Late last year, hundreds of employees supported an internal memo that called on Zuckerberg to limit the abilities of Facebook’s political advertising products.

On Dec. 30, Andrew Bosworth, the head of Facebook’s virtual and augmented reality division, wrote on his internal Facebook page that, as a liberal, he found himself wanting to use the social network’s powerful platform against Trump.

But Bosworth said that even though keeping the current policies in place “very well may lead to” Trump’s reelection, it was the right decision. Dozens of Facebook employees pushed back on Bosworth’s conclusions, arguing in the comments section below his post that politicians should be held to the same standard that applies to other Facebook users.

For now, Facebook appears willing to risk disinformation in support of unfettered speech.

“Ultimately, we don’t think decisions about political ads should be made by private companies,” Leathern said. “Frankly, we believe the sooner Facebook and other companies are subject to democratically accountable rules on this, the better.”


2020 The New York Times Company

source: news.abs-cbn.com

Trump impeachment debate opens with fiery partisan battle

WASHINGTON - Democrats warned that US President Donald Trump was on the verge of dictatorship while Republicans fiercely defended his record at the opening of a stormy, historic debate on impeachment charges Wednesday.

The parties held tightly to diametrically opposed views of Trump as they weighed articles of impeachment at the beginning of a two-day debate.

Trump is alleged to have wielded the power of the presidency for personal and political gain by pressuring Ukraine to interfere in the 2020 US election.

There is little question about the outcome in the House Judiciary Committee: by the end of the week the majority-Democrat panel is expected to approve the charges and send them to the entire House of Representatives for passage next week.

But lawmakers in the televised hearing appeared focused on speaking to voters, whose sentiment will be crucial if, as expected, Trump goes on trial in the US Senate in January.

In a grave voice, Democratic committee chairman Jerry Nadler opened the hearing.

"Today we begin consideration of two articles of impeachment against President Donald J. Trump," he said.

"Taken together, the two articles charge President Trump with placing his private political interests above our national security, above our free and fair elections, and above our ability to hold public officials accountable," he said.

"If the president can first abuse his power and then stonewall all congressional requests for information, Congress cannot fulfill its duty to act as a check and balance against the Executive -- and the president becomes a dictator."

- Charges 'generic, vague' -
Doug Collins, the senior Republican on the committee, argued that Democrats have been seeking to impeach Trump ever since he came into office in January 2017, and have no clear case beyond "abuse of power."

"It's just generic vague statements," Collins said. 

"You go home and pick something you don't like about the president, and there's your abuse of power."

"This is as much about political expediency as it is anything else, and that should never be an article of impeachment."

Trump faces becoming only the third president in US history to be impeached and placed on trial in the Senate.

He is accused of pressuring Ukraine for help against his Democratic challenger Joe Biden ahead of next year's national elections, and holding up military aid to the country which it needed to face Russian aggression, unless it did his bidding.

REPUBLICANS STICK BEHIND TRUMP

With the committee's 40 members speaking one by one, alternating by party, Republicans were united in claiming there was no evidence to support the charges.

Jim Jordan said Democrats were simply refighting their 2016 election loss and hated Trump.

"This is about one basic fact: the Democrats have never accepted the will of the American people," he said. "They don't like the 63 million people who voted for this president."

But Democrats clung to statements of principles, warning not to let Trump get away with inviting foreign interference in a US election.

"Will we hold the president accountable, or will we serve as his accomplices?" asked Hank Johnson. 

Most indications are that the Republican majority in the Senate will ultimately protect Trump from conviction and removal.

But impeachment could mar his record as president and affect his reelection chances in November 2020.

At a political rally in Hershey, Pennsylvania on Tuesday, he ridiculed the charges.

"Everybody said, 'This is impeachment light,'" Trump said.

"They're impeaching me and there are no crimes. This has to be a first in history. They're impeaching me. You know why? Because they want to win an election. And that's the only way they can do it."

source: news.abs-cbn.com

US Democratic frontrunner Biden drops in polls after debate

WASHINGTON - Support among Democrats declined for frontrunner Joe Biden following last week's US presidential candidate debate, while Senator Kamala Harris saw her popularity rise, according to CNN poll released on Monday.

Biden, a former vice president under Barack Obama, still polls the highest at 22 percent among the two-dozen contenders for the Democratic nomination to take on Republican President Donald Trump.

But that's a drop from 32 percent support in late May, while Harris, a California Senator whose exchange with Biden on racial discrimination was seen as a standout moment during the debates, saw her standing rise to 17 percent in the CNN poll, putting her in second place.

The trend was affirmed by a Politico/Morning Consult poll released last Saturday that showed Biden's support declining to 33 percent from 38 percent before the debate, as Harris's climbed to 12 percent from six percent.

Harris, who aims to be the first black female US president, was tied at 12 percent alongside progressive Senator Elizabeth Warren in that poll.

The CNN poll, which surveyed 1,613 voters and had a margin of error of three percent, showed Warren in third place with 15 percent support.

It also indicated declining support for leftwing Senator Bernie Sanders, who dropped to 14 percent, from 18 percent before the debates.

However the Politico/Morning Consult poll, which surveyed 2,407 voters with a two percent margin of error, showed Sanders's support unchanged after the debates and put him in second place, after Biden.

Meanwhile Pete Buttigieg, the young mayor of South Bend, Indiana, came in fifth place in both polls; CNN had him at four percent support, while Politico/Morning Consult put him at six percent.

Despite post-debate fluctuations, voters still see Biden as the strongest candidate against Trump, with 43 percent saying he has the best change to unseat him out of any of the Democrats.

Only 13 percent believed Sanders could do the job, while Harris managed to convince 12 percent of voters.

Months of campaigning remain for the Democratic contenders, with the opening Democratic primary contest in Iowa set for next February.

And polls in the United States have been wrong before, most notably during the 2016 election, in which Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton led in most polls but nonetheless lost to Trump.

source: news.abs-cbn.com