Joseph Robinette Biden Jr. was elected the 46th president of the United States on Saturday, promising to restore political normalcy and a spirit of national unity to confront raging health and economic crises, and making Donald J. Trump a one-term president after four years of tumult in the White House. Mr. Biden ’s victory amounted to a repudiation of Mr. Trump by millions of voters exhausted with his divisive conduct and chaotic administration, and was delivered by an unlikely alliance of women, people of color, old and young voters and a sliver of disaffected Republicans. Mr. Trump is only the third elected president since World War II to lose re-election, and the first in more than a quarter-century. The result also provided a history-making moment for Mr. Biden’s running mate, Senator Kamala Harris of California, who will become the first woman to serve as vice president. With his triumph, Mr. Biden, who turns 78 later this month, fulfilled his decades-long ambition … [Read more...]

Herman Cain, who rose from poverty in the segregated South to become chief executive of a successful pizza chain and then thrust himself into the national spotlight by seeking the 2012 Republican presidential nomination, has died. He was 74. His death was announced on Thursday on his website and on social media accounts. It did not say precisely when or where he died. Dan Calabrese, the website’s editor, attributed the death to the coronavirus, which President Trump, in a White House briefing, later referred to as the “China virus” and a “horrible plague” in affirming it as the cause. Mr. Cain had been hospitalized in the Atlanta area this month after testing positive for the virus on June 29. “We knew when he was first hospitalized with Covid-19 that this was going to be a rough fight,” Mr. Calabrese said in the announcement, adding, “Although he was basically pretty healthy in recent years, he was still in a high-risk group because of his history with … [Read more...]