Joe Biden Didn't Declare Victory. But He Came Pretty Damn Close.

Joe Biden insisted he wasn’t declaring victory on Wednesday. But it sure sounded like he was.

“After a long night of counting, it’s clear that we're winning enough states to reach 270 electoral votes needed to win the presidency. I’m not here to declare that we’ve won, but I am here to report that when the count is finished, we believe that we will be the winners,” Biden said in a brief speech from his hometown of Wilmington, Delaware, on Wednesday.

If the current vote counts hold, Biden is right. The Associated Press has called Wisconsin and Arizona for Biden, along with an Omaha-based House seat (Nebraska gives each House seat an Electoral College vote). Biden has emerged with a solid lead in Michigan as well, and is clinging to a narrow lead in Nevada, where votes continue to be counted. With those states, he has exactly the number of Electoral College votes needed for the presidency.

Pennsylvania and Georgia continue to count votes, with Biden looking like he’ll take the lead in Pennsylvania and Georgia still too close to count.

Trump’s campaign is whipping up a frenzy of accusations and a flurry of lawsuits to try to reverse Biden’s apparent wins. They’ve filed or promised court cases in Michigan, Nevada, and Pennsylvania; pledged to seek a Wisconsin recount; and threatened other pending actions, while claiming without evidence that the election is being stolen from Trump.

Trump backers were also stirring trouble at vote-counting stations in Michigan Wednesday afternoon, trying to barge into the center where ballots were being tabulated while chanting “Stop the count.”

But Biden made it clear that he wouldn’t back down.

“Every vote must be counted. No one's going to take our democracy away from us, not now, not ever. America has come too far. America’s fought too many battles, America’s endured too much to ever let that happen. We the people will not be silenced. We the people will not be bullied. We the people will not surrender. My friends, I'm confident we’ll emerge victorious,” he said.

There are still a lot of possible twists and turns to this election. But barring a major reversal or significant vote tabulation error, Biden appears to be on his way to the White House.