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Celebrate Biden’s Victory. Then Confront Why It Was So Difficult to Achieve.
A slow, grinding Biden victory call is still a win. Why doesn’t it feel better?
Joe Biden just won the election for president of the United States — at long last. He won more votes than any American president in history, and he unseated the incumbent Donald Trump. So why doesn’t this huge win feel better?
Maybe because we all have whiplash.
This whole process has been a rollercoaster. The lead-up to Biden’s victory on Friday was slow and anticlimactic. As the results rolled in on Tuesday night, the numbers looked like they were stacking up in Donald Trump’s favor; he won Ohio and Florida, two big Electoral College prizes, and staved off insurgency in Texas. Biden’s gains came more slowly, stacking up Wednesday and Thursday and, finally, tipping in his favor in Pennsylvania on Friday morning.
But by the end of election night, it was clear that more Americans had cast a ballot for Biden than for any other presidential candidate ever, and for the seventh time in eight elections, the Democratic candidate had won the popular vote. And yet, because of our fundamentally undemocratic Electoral College system, Republican presidents have served three of those terms, and as the nation waited, Trump…
