JimHeath.TV projects former Vice President Joe Biden as the President-Elect of the United States, defeating President Donald Trump.
Biden will become America’s 46th president.
We make the projection based on Biden’s growing strength in Pennsylvania.
The states 20 electoral votes will deliver to Biden over the 270 he needs to win.
In addition, Biden now leads in Georgia, Arizona and Nevada.
Biden took the lead in Georgia overnight, but the 16 electoral votes remain too close to call.
JimHeath.TV this morning also projected Nevada’s 6 electoral votes for Biden.
That gives Biden a total of 280 electoral votes, not including Arizona’s, and 232 for Trump.
JimHeath.TV has called both North Carolina and Alaska for Trump.
BIDEN WINS
Joe Biden’s biography treads back along the trail of horrendous tragedies, dashed hopes and dramatic implosions that preceded his improbable third run at the presidency, and gives at least some clues to the kind of leader he will become if he wins.
Throughout his career, Biden, 77, has followed his gut and adapted to circumstances.
His inclination to build partnerships across the aisle will, most likely, be at odds with the expectations of a new generation of voters impatient with incremental change.
Since winning the nomination he has set up an array of policy working groups, who are cautiously optimistic they are exerting influence on the party program, but ultimately the trajectory of a Biden presidency will depend on whether he can unite his party and the country
Biden rose fast in Delaware politics and scored an extraordinary upset winning a senate seat in 1972, at the age of 29.
But the triumph was almost immediately overwhelmed by catastrophe.
While he was away setting up his office in Washington, a truck drove into the family car, killing his wife, Neilia and their baby daughter, Naomi.
His sons, Beau and Hunter were badly injured, and the newly elected senator was sworn in at their hospital bedside.
Biden’s first run for president in 1988 collapsed under the weight of his own flaws.
An emotive campaign speech about his roots turned out to have been substantially borrowed from British Labour leader, Neil Kinnock.
When journalists starting digging further, he was found to have exaggerated his academic achievements and participation in the civil rights movement.
His second presidential run collapsed on take-off in 2007; it is remembered chiefly for another gaffe, his description of Barack Obama as “the first mainstream African-American who is articulate and bright and clean and a nice-looking guy”.
Having won the Democratic nomination, Obama took almost everyone by surprise in choosing Biden as his running mate, looking past the condescension, the blunders and the rambling loquaciousness to his virtues, his contacts on Capitol Hill and his substantial political talents.
Biden’s particular charisma is at the other end of the spectrum from Trump’s crowd-pleasing.
The former vice president is at his best at close quarters where personal connection and empathy matter.
While serving as vice president, Biden lost his eldest son, Beau, an Iraq war veteran and rising political star with whom he had an unusually strong bond, to a brain tumor.
Americans can sense Biden has come back from dark places and remembers what it is like to be there.
His experiences have helped cement friendships and alliances, in particular among black leaders, who forgave him his patchy record on race and came to his rescue in South Carolina in February, when he was on the point of being knocked out of the primaries.
Donald Trump will join Jimmy Carter and George Bush as the modern-day one-term presidents.
Trump is the first incumbent since President George Bush nearly 30 years ago to be defeated for reelection.
Trump’s team, seeking to keep his slim path to victory alive, has launched a flurry of sometimes contradictory and scattershot legal challenges, without offering evidence of irregularities, demanding vote counts continue in states where he is behind and wanting them shut down in those where he leads.
Last night, Trump effectively sent a signal that he has no intention of leaving power without a fight if he ends up losing the election.
Trump’s speech from the White House briefing room could end up being one of the most dangerous presidential statements in American history.
In it, Trump falsely claimed that votes that were cast before and during the election, but counted after Election Day, are illegal votes.
Biden emerged in Wilmington, Delaware, last night for a short speech meant to project optimism, urge patience in the vote counting and to apparently create a picture of a presidency in waiting.
“In America, the vote is sacred. It is how the people of this nation express their will,” he said, calling for calm and patience as the vote counting process unfolds.