At the start of February, about 200 people gathered in a small venue in snowy Iowa to watch Joe Biden forcibly try to excite the Democratic base enough to make him the Democratic nominee for president. No one in the venue was excited about him, not even his supporters. But he stayed friendly to everyone who wanted to meet with him and gave it everything he had to try and convince them that he was a fitting choice, and didn't give up.
Less than a year later, he is the president elect and apparently much less accessible. At age 10, Biden moved from Scranton, Pennsylvania, to Delaware, known as "the First State" because it was the first of the 13 colonies to ratify the Constitution, on Dec. 7, 1787. Now it looks like it is the state that has given the US its No. 1 citizen.
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Like back then, at a soporific rally in Des Moines, almost no people came on Saturday to celebrate the fact that in two months, one of their own will become the 46th president of the United States.
Biden's neighborhood in Wilmington, the capital of Delaware, is beautiful. There is a sense of celebration, but no one is losing their minds. Maybe that's just how the people of Delaware are: everyone is calm, easygoing, polite. Rumor has it that he was home when the news was announced, but no one was able to confirm it for me, and the police cars on the street made it impossible to approach the house.
I encountered a very calm state, starting with the police and including Biden's neighborhood. There were two police cars on his street, and a few neighbors had gone out to celebrate quietly, among the colorful pastoral autumn leaves. One of the shopping centers next to the highway that leads to the city is called the Biden Visitors Center, having been renamed after the president-elect's son, Beau, died of cancer. People were excited there, too, but held themselves in check, with the calm that is so characteristic of the place.
It was as if Wilmington wanted to project to America that Biden would be the total opposite of the current president, without bells and whistles, for good or bad. America might not be fired up about Biden, but it looks like more than anything else it wanted calmer politics for a white. And along with COVID, that seems to be what gave Biden the victory.
The neighbors say they don't see him much in the neighborhood. In general, it's hard for people to see each other in this neighborhoods, because it's basically an area of estates that are hundreds of yards apart.
Biden's neighbor Liza tells me, "I'm very proud that my neighbor is going to be president of the US. It's a weight off our minds that [President] Trump won't stay on. He won't listen to experts on COVID. It's the COVID, stupid, like Clinton said. He dragged America down. My husband and I are over the moon. We're convinced he'll be an excellent president."
Another neighbor, Joe, adds, "It's very nice my neighbor is president, but mainly, that we've gotten rid of President Trump. That makes it all worth it."
One neighbor tells me that Jerusalem shouldn't be worried: "He's supported Israel since he was a senator, he will never abandon it, it would be against everything he believes. Please, Israelis, have faith in him, he won't disappoint you. He has good relations with [Prime Minister] Netanyahu. In my opinion, it's in the best interest of both countries."
I arrived in Wilmington on Friday, before the announcement. There were already police around Biden's house at 1209 Barley Mill Road. The very magnanimous police officers let me approach, but as I was close to the entrance, I was asked to turn around.
"Where are the journalists?" I asked.
"Among the trees," the police officer says, smiling. A local neighbor who drives up tells met that Biden likes outdoor sports, in nature.
"Mostly, I don't envy him," he says. "Think about what awaits him, the economy and COVID. It won't be easy."
I went on to the city's Chase Convention Center, where he spoke late Friday night and already predicted what would officially happen on Saturday. "We are going to win this race with a clear majority," he said, insisting that the vote count must not be stopped as the Trump campaign had demanded, claiming fraud. "Your voice will be heard," Biden promised, with his vice presidential candidate Kamala Harris standing alongside him.
Outside the convention center, his supporters – half of them Black – were already gathering, carrying signs and even wooden Joe Biden figures. Shinay Davenport came with her son Troy Davis, both African American. They walked with their arms around each other.
"Yes, we're very happy with what's happening in America and the election result," she told me. "I don't agree that he wasn't an exciting candidate."
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Her son adds, "We supported him from the start. We knew him when he was a senator here in Delaware and we always liked what he did for the community. We always knew how to fight together and how to celebrate together, and that's how it will continue. Trump was a legitimate candidate, and we need to put the ideological differences aside. It was a battle between the Republicans and the Democrats, between two worldviews."
This weekend, after Biden's speech, I was sitting in a city bar. COVID is almost unfelt, and the bartender offered me several local beers. I ask her if she is excited about the election result: "Not really, Biden is only popular here because he beat Trump, not because he's Biden," she says.
Delmon, a young Black man who was born in Delaware, says, "There are a lot of people here who like Trump. They either hate him or they love him, but they're indifferent to Biden."
"But he's from your city," I press him.
Delmon, who works in a local hotel, tells me that his father, who works for the local railroad, knows the president-elect well: "When he was senator, he'd ride the train. He would talk to people, the passengers. My dad saw him all the time."
"Will America unite behind Biden?" I ask him.
"Let's be honest," he says. "The divide in America is nothing new. Maybe it got worse under Trump, but it's not new. When Obama was president, there wasn't a divide here?"
It seems as if this conversation at the bar, the lack of mass celebration in the street and the relative quiet of Biden's campaign these past few months close the circle of the same quiet rally in Iowa in the freezing cold, sometime back in February.
Then, almost no one thought that Biden, who will be the oldest president to take office, could become the party's nominee, but in the past two weeks, I've seen his convoy arrive twice, in Philadelphia, and I saw how he managed to market himself as presidential. That apparently made up for the lack of a campaign, and the voters' indifference.
After a quiet weekend, people were already planning a fireworks celebration of the announcement of Biden's victory, as he was about to give his victory speech. Across the entire US, spontaneous eruptions of joy could be seen, car horns honking and a general atmosphere of a street party – possibly the result of the sudden drop in tension, and of course for many it was a release after four years under Trump.
Trump himself isn't giving up, even after Biden supporters across the US went out to celebrate the announcement that he had been elected after securing more than 270 electoral votes. His supporters aren't giving up, either, and once again feel invisible to the elites, even if there still isn't proof of mass voter fraud. There was even a rumor that they came to Biden's speech in central Wilmington on Friday, and there had been concern about violence.
Trump's people, like the 45th president himself, wonder why votes were allowed to arrive late, why people weren't allowed to correct their votes, and why – they claim – there was not full transparency of the vote counting process. They feel that they weren't counted and don't count. Some of the Trump campaign's petitions managed to secure temporary injunctions, and they truly believe there were irregularities.
On Saturday, Trump supporters were still demonstrating in some states at polling places where they claim there was suspicion of irregularities in the vote counting. The demonstrations became protests against the media, as well, and in Georgia they shouted, "It's not over, it's not ever, it's fake news!"
