Biden Supporters Wait For Victory Party In Wilmington, Del.
2 hrs ago. 'Waiting, watching and wilting in Wilmington for word of an election result.' The Washington Post, Nov. 7, 2020.
WILMINGTON, Del. —On Day 4 of election night, outside the Chase Center here, a gathering place emerged from a state of suspended animation. Cranes lifted massive lights into the sky. Forklifts moved concrete barriers. Workers yanked protective plastic off scaffolding. Balloons were tied to a metal fence, marking a perimeter. It was Friday evening, and Joe Biden’s campaign was getting ready for a socially distanced celebration party. Again. But it was all for naught. Rather than declare victory on a commanding and brilliantly lit stage, shortly before 11 p.m. Biden stood behind a plain lectern on a smaller space set up in an atrium of the Chase Center to urge patience.
- “My fellow Americans, we don’t have a final declaration of victory yet,” Biden said, with his running mate, Sen. Kamala D. Harris (D-Calif.), standing nearby, “but the numbers . . . tell us a clear and convincing story. We’re going to win this race.” Biden said he’d work for all Americans, regardless of party. “We may be opponents but we’re not enemies. We’re Americans,” he said, with his senior staff watching from the back of the room. “I’ll work as hard for those who voted against me as I will for those who voted for me.”-
For Biden’s staff, after 18 months of campaigning, being snubbed by party donors, enduring a 4th-place finish in Iowa, then sinking to 5th in New Hampshire, and after ultimately clinching the nomination and listening to Democrats complain about how they were running an overly cosseted campaign for months, they believed they had proved critics wrong.
Now all they needed was one or two networks to call the race and declare Biden president-elect. They needed a larger lead in Pennsylvania or bigger margins in Georgia or some more votes in Arizona and a call in Nevada. As members of Biden’s team allowed themselves to absorb the news that they had nearly won, the landscape around them was changing.
The next president might be in their midst. The Federal Aviation Administration posted temporary flight restrictions over Wilmington airspace starting 2 p.m. Friday through the following Wednesday.
The Secret Service sent reinforcements to Delaware to provide security fitting for a team that would soon lead the country. Officers already in Wilmington extended their occupation of coveted rooms in the Westin adjacent to the Chase Center, where Biden’s team set up its election-night headquarters. Now they just needed a few more votes to make it official. Local supporters began arriving at the Wilmington riverfront area by early afternoon, taking advantage of the unseasonably warm, 70-degree weather to get a glimpse of history. Ron Ozer, a chemical engineering professor at Villanova University, set up a picnic with his wife just outside a black fence blocking off a secure area. They had an iPad to listen to MSNBC. They had crackers. They had folding chairs. They were ready to wait.
They didn’t come down Tuesday night, and they said as the evening wore on they became “disappointed” to see so much support for President Trump.
“We kind of knew, logically, that there were a lot of ballots to count,” Ozer said. “But it didn’t really sink in.”...
But as the sun set in Wilmington on Friday, the likelihood of a victory speech from Biden faded. It was dawning on the campaign that they’d need to wait for a 5th day before the planned celebrations could start.
And as for those white roses that had arrived on Election Day, they had wilted...
https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/waiting-watching-and-wilting-in-wilmington-for-word-of-an-election-result/ar-BB1aMdkH