84 thoughts on “Joe Biden gives victory speech momentarily”

  1. I’m just ecstatic that Trump will be out of our government soon! I’m a far left Independent (progressive) that holds no party loyalty, but I *HAD* to vote for Biden to get that sociopathic fascist out. I’m celebrating with my second glass of Biltmore red.

    [tink]
    Cheers!

  2. I thought Harris gave a pretty decent speech (when she wasn’t being interrupted by the “Look At Me” air horns and whistles).

    1. At least in this duo tonight, she gave a much better talk than Joe is giving–not that his is bad. It just seems scripted, which it was, written a long time ago. But give the man this: what he’s saying is good stuff and is NOT DIVISIVE.

      Although Illinois was always fated to go for Biden, I’m still proud of having voted for him.

        3. In Germany there is a soccer metaphor attributed to the legendary coach Sepp Herberger: “The ball is round and a game lasts 90 minutes.”

          Trump thought that he kicked an (American) football and that the game is finished after 85 min. But in the last 5 minutes end Biden scored the decisives goals. Well done.

  4. I loved it when Uncle Joe literally ran to the podium. Surely a deliberate display that he’s vigorous, but still wonderful.

    And he wore a mask as an example, and, though both he and Harris are covid-negative, they still didn’t hug but fist-bumped–as another example. It’s a good start.

    Wait! Did he say “May God protect our church” at the end? Or did I mishear?

        2. I read about Roman Catholics voting for Trump – pardon my French – seems a bit strange considering Biden is RC? I would have thought that might trump – pardon my French – party? Obviously not! I thought followers of Jesus were suppose to love their enemas & turn the other cheek? Seems they preach but do not practice…!

          1. Abortion–single issue.
            Also now many Pentecostal-ish Catholics, speaking-in-tongues nitwits; such as a member of the Supreme Court apparently.

            It is a great relief to the entire human species, now and future members, to be rid of Mass Murderer donald.

            Congratulations and thanks to the voters who did this.

      1. And CBC was talking to people on the street. All Democrats and such a relief to hear sane, smart, regular people talk.

  5. Harris gave an uplifting speech and it was directed to counter Trump’s actions over four years.

    Biden called for unity and the soul of the nation. He continued on all the right themes. Possibilities.

    Both mentioned science, equality, decency.

    1. You ain’t see nothin’ yet. Wait till he gets into the Oval office. It will be minimum wage for everyone – including DT.

  7. As I tweeted after Biden’s speech:

    Platitudes, god-bothering, silliness, and more than a few fluffs. Despite that, still moving. We’ll see how things pan out but this is a good day. Above all, it’s nice to see someone recognisably human as President(-elect).

    1. I don’t condemn the God-bothering. I think he has a huge task of reuniting the country and religion is going to have to be part of it. Unfortunately we do not yet live in a post religion society like many in Europe.

    2. Yeah, I could’ve done without the religious pablum.

      But I’m trying to forgive him his trespasses, as he forgives those who trespass against him. 🙂

      2. I can’t remember: why did the Vatican II Catholics prefer “trespasses” and “trespassed against us”? Wikipedia says this is supposedly traced back to Origen of Alexandria, and differs both from Matthew (“debts” and “debtors”) and from Luke “sins” and “sinned against us”).

        Memorizing those prayers is not usually what people mean when they speak of their “wasted youth”, but man did the priests ever waste a lot of mine.

        1. Me too; I was stuck with Basilians for 3 of 5 high school years. The ‘teacher’ couldn’t figure out some of the simplest Chemistry problems. Similarly math.

          At least when they formally put on a ‘retreat’, that being a blatant attempt at recruitment to the priesthood, I was labelled a “..complete waste of time”. Proud of that incident 61 years ago.

    3. The first thing I thought was, “oh that’s from the bible. I always thought it was the Pete Seeger song. Then I thought that would be a good way to say it, “the book of Ecclesiastes and that song by Pete Seeger tell us….”.

      2. “the book of Ecclesiastes and that song by Pete Seeger tell us….”

        You made my day with this. 😆

  9. Somewhere, in a darkened White House, Donald Trump was sitting alone watching this on teevee, eating a Big Mac and his own liver.

    3. He was alone inside, but outside, he sure had a lot of company. He should be proud of the massive crowds he created! Huge ratings, the ‘ugest! Irony’s a bitch, and even more so to someone like crooked Trump.

  11. He and Harris both specifically said “SCIENCE”. He’s setting up a Covid transition advisory group on Monday. tRump is going to court on Monday. I will overlook the God comments.

  12. Thank you for the heads-up. As it turned out I was watching it on CTV which carried it all. I thought Biden was great and Harris was awesome – a word I don’t often use. She brought tears to my eyes – she is as good an orator as Obama was. Another reason for theRepublicans to hate her. I’m glad Trudeau stuck his neck out and phoned to congratulate them. Trump still has two months to sling shit around and get revenge all over.

    Mark is on phone now.

    >

  13. I found both their speeches inspirational, even with the god stuff. “The people have chosen hope, unity, decency and science.” IMO, this was particularly moving.

  14. I watched this on Fox News for fun. I was impressed by the graciousness of their coverage. The female reporters in particular seemed genuinely moved by Kamala’s speech. One even seemed to have a tear or two in her eyes. Infamous Republican operative Karl Rove gave the main post-speech commentary, and I was surprised that his comments were uniformly complimentary. There has been some press that Fox is turning away from Trump, and maybe that is happening to some degree.

    2. I’ve been watching Fox News for the last couple of days. The first couple of days was all CNN. The first day I switched to FN it just to see what they were saying, and I ended up turning it on whenever I turned on one of the Big Three after that (MSNBC, CNN, and Fox News) because I (1) felt really heartened by their neutral coverage and repeated debunking of every specific claim of voter fraud, and (2) because, shockingly, they ended up providing the most non-partisan coverage of the Big Three. I felt good to see them repudiating the bullshit coming from the Trump camp.

      I can’t speak to their nightly coverage, where people like Hannity are on. All I can say is that their daytime coverage was, considering that they’re Fox News and considering they’re two competitors, surprisingly…good.

      I honestly can’t believe I just wrote any of that. I never would have even thought of it being possible two days ago.

      1. Much like the Wall St Journal, their news coverage is separate from the opinion folks. The Hannity, Carlson, etc., group is pretty hard to take.

        1. Yes, but what I found on CNN was that opinion was constantly mixed in with reporting facts via their constant use of panels (no criticism for John King though, as I really like him and how he just gives me raw, nitty-gritty numbers), while MSNBC was just all opinion all the time (which it has been for years).

        2. “The Hannity, Carlson, etc., group is pretty hard to take.”

          I wonder if diaper stocks are up.

      2. If he was half decent and had the best interests of masses of people in mind, Rupert Murdoch would have phoned up his buddy, the mass murderer, and told him to publicly renounce his AR-15 toting tribe of savages, or else Murdoch would fire the 3 lying opinionators of Fox evenings, and the 3 in the morning as well.

    3. The female reporters in particular seemed genuinely moved by Kamala’s speech.

      Yeah, I’ve been watching a lot of the post-election coverage on Fox, to gauge the reaction of the Right to what was going on, and to see how much support there might be out there for Trump in his efforts to stave off reality.

      I saw that reporter on Fox immediately after the Biden and Harris speeches, too, and was genuinely impressed by the sincerity of her positive statements about Kamala. I tried to catch her name, but all I got was “Jackie” something.

      1. One unfortunate side-effect: this will leave a big hole for Trump if he does decide to start up a “Trump TV.” All the conservatives who have been watching Fox News report factual information about the election and debunk claims of fraud will have a place to flee.

        1. I think the evening pundits on Fox — Tucker Carlson, Sean Hannity, Laura Ingraham — are already using their shows to audition for Trump in an effort to secure staring slots on his future TV venture.

      2. “I tried to catch her name, but all I got was “Jackie” something.”

        Yes, she’s the one I suspected had tears in her eyes. I also tried to catch her name and it was something like “Heinrich” or “Heinlich”.

    5. I wanted to answer the question “What is tRump seeing right now?” so I watched Fox for a while, too. They couldn’t bring themselves to just acknowledge the massive demonstration of joy that had burst out in streets around the world, inserting comments like “There’s very little violence right here.” It wasn’t deadpan understated sarcasm.

      1. Yes, and every report from the crowd in front of the White House included the phrase “…the pungent odor of marijuana”….

        But during much of the day the background screens alongside the anchors were showing joyful celebrations around the country rather than pro-Trump protests.

  15. I don’t normally follow politics much so I wasn’t terribly familiar with Biden as an orator. My main introductions were through the televised debates and further public speaking afterward.

    I found him earnest, but a bit cringy and stiff. But I had a feeling that it would be different if he won. Because I know for one thing he has some struggle with stuttering. And the pressure was so high in making election speeches and debates to get it just right, to not blow it.

    Indeed I did find that difference in tonight’s speech. To me he seemed much more relaxed, much more fluid and natural and more effortlessly emotional. Still not a great speaker, but once president and the election pressure is off, I think he’ll do well in commanding the stage. And, pretty darned impressive anyway for a man his age!

    1. “…impressive anyway for a man his age!”

      C’mon, I’m almost exactly one year older! 🙂

    2. “I found him earnest, but a bit cringy and stiff.”

      Do I correctly gather that by “cringy” he makes you cringe? Can you specify what is “cringy” about him?

      1. Filippo

        I found Biden to have a stiff, marble-mouthed delivery and awkward physical emphasis with his hands (almost ill timed with the point he wanted to make, like a bad actor), which undercut the potency of his words.
        Kind of wanting to avert my eyes.

        But he was much better last night.

    3. I thought he did very well and hit all the right notes. Stylistically, he was pretty much stuck at one register – high voice and energized. He could have used some variation in tone and pace to establish more impact. But, the amount of relief I feel just having a sane president makes such a criticism small potatoes. He’s the least full of malarkey you’ve ever seen. 🤪

  16. My family and I got together, drank, and watched the speeches. I think we all had tears in our eyes at some point. Leading up to the speeches, we started with an immediate opening of some champagne and a toast. It felt like a giant weight had been lifted from our shoulders. I don’t think we really understood just how much of a mental toll Trump’s Presidency has taken on us. It’s like depression: when it slowly builds, day after day, year after year, it’s hard to notice the differences after awhile. But, when you finally come out the other side, you realize just how much you were feeling and just how bad it was.

    I’m so elated. I have to imagine we’ll be drinking champagne again tomorrow.

    1. It wasn’t until today that I realized how much I disliked Trump. The thought of him being the potus for 4 more years sickened me. I had a sore stomach. It is such a relief to just be back to normalcy. No more hateful screaming that we can’t get away from.

      1. Yeah, watching the early returns on Tuesday night and seeing first Florida, then Ohio, then Texas all fall to Trump, and the early indications being that Georgia and North Carolina and the upper Midwest states would, too, I felt the 2016 nausea come sweeping over me, like post-Ludovico-Technique Alex DeLarge waking up to the strains of Beethoven’s Ninth in A Clockwork Orange, and, like Alex, I was ready to jump out the window to make it stop:

        https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PDkzbIIKDJU

        Lucky thing, I suppose, I live on the first floor, 🙂

    3. Thanks for expressing exactly how my wife and I feel. She came home last night after work and said she couldn’t take the wait anymore. Wait could also be weight. I talked her from the ledge, explaining how some states weren’t ready for the massive mail-in ballots, and that was a good thing since they would lean D and mathematically Biden would win, blah, blah. She knew all that, but stress is stress and we both went to bed again frazzled. This morning felt like Christmas when I was seven. Pure joy and a forward future. Keep on, keeping on America…and btw, you have a shit load of work to do, and it starts now.

  17. Finally! For what seemed like weeks (but was actually days) typing ‘US election’ into Google gave ‘Biden 264 Trump 214’. Now it says 290 – 214 which looks decisive. Anyone sane would concede at this point.

    But I’m reminded of a comment made by a competitor in the America’s Cup, that notoriously litigious boat race: “We sail around for a bit, then we go to court to find out who won”.

    I don’t think any US President in living memory has done one-tenth as much as Trump to destroy any goodwill, trust or respect for the USA internationally. Hopefully American foreign policy will now start to resemble something rational and coherent and not just the outcome of last nights tantrum.

    Well, I suppose we can at least extract a bit of schadenfreude in the next few weeks watching the orange buffoon thrashing around desperately trying to avoid being labelled a LOSER.

    1. “I don’t think any US President in living memory has done one-tenth as much as Trump to destroy any goodwill, trust or respect for the USA internationally.”

      Reagan was actually worse, or at least tied. Secretly selling arms to Iran to finance a secret terrorist war in Nicaragua targeting civilians, probably organized drug-smuggling into the US by the CIA also to fund said war, etc.

      Trump’s biggest foreign horror was his letting Turkey attack the Kurds. That definitely destroyed many of our allies’ confidence in the US.

      The one thing I will give Trump credit for is that he did not start any actual new wars. Of course, he killed more Americans than all the wars from the Korean War onward, but here I am just addressing his impact on other countries.

      1. Made me nervous that Trump was given the nuclear launch codes everyday; still does, and will until noon, January 20th.

  18. Vice President – Elect Harris within W H I T E =
    the C O L O R of the >Suffragists of >100 years ago.

    Blue

  20. The speeches seemed especially good. That might be due to what we have had to compare it to for the last 4 years.

    Take this bet. By the time Trump is actually evicted from the building the deaths will total more than 300,000.

    2. Jointly I’m guessing they spoke for about 40 minutes. I don’t remember hearing a single lie. It will take some time getting used to this!

    3. The speeches seemed especially good. That might be due to what we have had to compare it to for the last 4 years.

      I heard something like this on a German radio station. The commentator said that while many German journalists rated Biden’s speech as okay, but not surprising, the more praiseful US reports may show what they had to deal with over the last years.

  21. This morning on NPR’s “Sunday Weekend Edition” there’s a segment giving a synopsis of Biden’s political career and tragedy in his life. Toward the end the presenter references Biden’s being criticized for being “out of touch,” but does not identify who so sez. Apparently not so “out of touch” that he wasn’t elected, eh?

    Yesterday on “Saturday Weekend Edition” Scott Simon interviewed Republican pollster Frank Luntz. I think it worth the trouble to read/listen to.

    http://www.npr.org/2020/11/07/932422888/the-polls-for-this-election-were-off-again-is-this-the-end-of-the-industry

    “LUNTZ: . . . Trump people don’t like to talk to pollsters . . . think that their opinions will be manipulated . . . ridiculed . . . when a polling outlet either calls them or sends them an email to cooperate . . . cancel culture . . . .”

    “Sends them an email to cooperate” sounds to me like lecturing, hectoring, not a “carrot” to cooperate. Also, surely there are not a few Biden voters who want nothing to do with pollsters.

    “And until you can convince people that their opinions matter, until you can prove to them that they will have an impact, you’re going to have this segment of society refusing to participate, and the pollsters are going to get it wrong again and again and again.”

    Of course voters’ opinions matter. But, is the “carrot” to participate in a poll the prospect of swaying that finger-to-the-wind fraction of other voters who want to be able to crow that they voted for the winner and not for the candidate who, win or lose, best represents their principles and interests? It seems an exercise in ego-stroking. (As JFK quoted I forget whom regarding the Bay of Pigs fiasco at a press conference, “Success has a thousand fathers; failure is an orphan.”) Perhaps I’m dense, but I can’t come up with any other motivation.

    The most meaningful impact voters can have is to VOTE, not opinionate for the benefit of profit-oriented polling businesses and their political masters, the former seeking to justify their existence to the latter. I perceive that Luntz and his confreres are more afraid of going out of business than they are concerned about voters carrying out an alleged civic duty to participate in polls. It’s not the census.

    I turn off the logorrheic spigot.

  22. Jerry, Steven Pinker’s tweets are limited now. I can’t see them and I don’t think most people can.

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