US election 2020: President-elect Joe Biden turns to Bruce Springsteen, Mary J. Blige to send a message with win

Biden walks out to Springsteen’s We Take Care of Our Own as he callx for end of ‘demonisation’ in American politics

American presidents have sparred before with Springsteen over music; Springsteen campaigned for Biden

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US President-elect Joe Biden, flanked by his daughter Ashley, waves after delivering remarks in Wilmington, Delaware after being declared the winner of the presidential election. (Photo: AFP

Published: 12:57pm, 8 Nov 2020Updated: 11:42am, 3 Dec 2020

Joe Biden looked to send a message, mirroring the themes of his campaign, with his choice of music at a rally late on Saturday EST where he made his first address to the nation as United States president-elect.

The former US vice-president came out to Bruce Springsteen’s We Take Care of Our Own, from 2012’s “Wrecking Ball”, an album that reflected much of the frustration and anger felt by working Americans in the years following the global financial crisis.

“Let this grim era of demonisation in American begin to end here and now,” Biden said as he tried to set a new tone in American politics after the often coarse and divisive language employed by his predecessor, Donald Trump.

On Saturday, Biden secured 290 electoral votes, surpassing the 270 needed for the presidency, after Pennsylvania was declared in his favour by Associated Press.

Biden made the Trump administration’s handling of the coronavirus pandemic a major issue of the US presidential election campaign. The US reported more than 126,000 new infections of Covid-19, the disease caused by the coronavirus, on Friday, the highest one-day total since the pandemic began and the latest daily record for infections, according to data from Johns Hopkins University.