Joe Biden formally accepts the Democratic Party’s nomination for the U.S. presidency Thursday evening in a speech that is expected to lay out his vision for the country as he seeks to defeat President Donald Trump in the November 3 election.
Biden’s speech on the fourth and final night of the Democratic National Convention comes after nearly 50 years in public office and two failed attempts for the White House in 1988 and 2008.
The speech will be the culmination of a nominating convention that was held virtually because of the coronavirus pandemic. The convention has featured some of the party’s highest-profile figures and even prominent Republicans who praised Biden in video speeches and issued urgent appeals to voters to end what they called Trump’s chaotic presidency.
The 77-year-old former senator and vice president during the Obama administration will deliver the speech in an event center in his hometown of Wilmington, Delaware. While the center will be mostly empty, Biden’s speech will be delivered before his largest audience since the pandemic forced him off the campaign trail in March.
U.S. Senator Chris Coons of Delaware, a close Biden ally, said the speech would likely focus on unifying a divided country.
“He recognizes this isn’t about Donald Trump. It’s not about Joe Biden. It’s about us, and it’s about who’s going to move us forward in a way that reminds us of the best in America, not the worst,” Coons said.
Biden’s speech comes one day after Senator Kamala Harris of California made history in accepting the Democratic Party’s nomination to appear alongside Biden as the vice-presidential candidate on the November ballot. Harris urged people to fight for “the America we know is possible.”
Harris, 55, a former prosecutor, is the fourth woman to be on a major U.S. party’s national ticket, but the first Black woman and first South Asian American. Her mother was a breast cancer scientist who emigrated from India. She died in 2009. Harris’ father, an economist, came to the U.S. from Jamaica.Senator from California and Democratic vice presidential nominee Kamala Harris speaks on the third day of the Democratic National Convention, at the Chase Center in Wilmington, Delaware, Aug. 19, 2020.Addressing the third night of the Democratic National Convention on Wednesday, Harris sharply criticized President Trump’s handling of the coronavirus pandemic and the economy, saying his “failure of leadership has cost lives and livelihoods.” Trump has continued to defend his administration’s response.
Earlier in the evening, former president Barack Obama delivered a blistering attack on Trump, his successor, saying Trump was treating the presidency like “one more reality show” and jeopardizing the democracy with inept leadership and an authoritarian style.
Responding to the speech the next day, White House adviser Stephen Miller called Obama “one of the worst presidents, if not the worst president, in U.S. history.”
In accepting the number two spot on the Democratic ticket, Senator Harris spoke of a nation with “complexities and imperfections,” and the need to put in the work to address its flaws, such as combatting racism and realizing “the promise of equal justice under the law.”
“Make no mistake, the road ahead is not easy. We will stumble. We may fall short. But I pledge to you that we will act boldly and deal with our challenges honestly. We will speak truths, and we will act with the same faith in you that we ask you to place in us,” Harris said.
Historic nomination
Biden’s choice of a Black woman of Asian America descent as his running mate broke the mold of traditional political ticket making and has excited many minorities and women in the party who were lukewarm or opposed to the 77-year-old white Biden leading the party into the fall election.
Harris pledged that a Biden-Harris administration would work to “build an economy that doesn’t leave anyone behind,” take steps to end the coronavirus pandemic, and build a community that is “strong and decent, just and kind.”Democratic presidential candidate former Vice President Joe Biden and running mate Sen. Kamala Harris, sign required documents for accepting the Democratic nomination for president and vice president of the United States in Wilmington, Aug. 14, 2020.”We must elect a president who will bring something different, something better, and do the important work,” Harris said. “A president who will bring all of us together — Black, White, Latino, Asian, Indigenous — to achieve the future we collectively want. We must elect Joe Biden.”
Harris also made reference to her birth at a hospital in Oakland, California, seemingly a reference to a baseless “birther” theory stoked last week by President Trump that Harris wasn’t qualified to be vice president because both of her parents were immigrants.
Meanwhile, Obama delivered a speech taped in historic Philadelphia saying that for nearly four years Trump “has shown no interest in treating the presidency as anything but one more reality show that he can use to get the attention he craves.”In this image from video, former President Barack Obama delivers a speech, taped in Philadelphia, during the third night of the Democratic National Convention, Aug. 19, 2020. (Democratic National Convention via AP)Obama warned that Trump’s reelection could undermine democracy and said he had hoped Trump would take the job of president seriously and “discover some reverence for the democracy that had been placed in his care.”“Donald Trump hasn’t grown into the job because he can’t,” Obama said. “And the consequences of that failure are severe. One-hundred-seventy-thousand Americans dead. Millions of jobs gone, while those at the top take in more than ever. Our worst impulses unleashed, our proud reputation around the world badly diminished, and our democratic institutions threatened like never before.”Obama’s speech was extraordinary because former presidents rarely publicly criticize a sitting president.
After excerpts of Obama’s comments were released earlier Wednesday, Trump responded, criticizing Obama as having been ineffective and putting U.S. democracy in danger.
“When I listen to that and I see the horror that he’s left us, the stupidity of the transactions that he made. Look what we’re doing. We have our great border wall. We have security,” Trump said at an afternoon press conference. “Look how bad he was, how ineffective he was.”‘Setting an example’
Many who spoke emphasized Biden’s character and fortitude in overcoming major losses in his life, including the deaths of his first wife and young daughter in a 1972 car accident and more recently, in 2015, the death of one of his grown sons, former Delaware attorney general Beau Biden, from brain cancer.
Obama said Biden knows the true strength of the United States “comes from setting an example the world wants to follow,” and that Biden and Harris have plans to get the coronavirus pandemic under control, expand medical coverage, rescue the U.S. economy and “restore our standing in the world.”In this image from video, former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton speaks during the third night of the Democratic National Convention Aug. 19, 2020. (Democratic National Convention via AP)Former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, who lost to Trump in her 2016 bid for president, urged people to turn out to vote as she advocated for Biden and Harris in her convention address Wednesday.“This is the team to pull our nation back from the brink, but they can’t do it without us,” Clinton said. “This can’t be another woulda, coulda, shoulda election. If you vote by mail, request your ballot now, and send it back right away. If you vote in person, do it early. Most of all, no matter what, vote.”
Trump has been making campaign stops and holding news conferences during Biden’s week in the political spotlight, traveling to several political battleground states.
On Thursday, he is visiting near Biden’s boyhood home in Scranton, Pennsylvania.Republicans are staging their virtual national convention next week, starting Monday and culminating with Trump’s renomination acceptance speech at the White House Aug. 27.
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