Biden vows to unite America, end ‘this season of darkness’
CONVENTION ENDS Democrats’ presidential candidate officially accepts nomination in a speech
nWASHINGTON: Joe Biden accepted the Democratic nomination for the American presidency on Thursday, the last day of the party’s first ever virtually held national convention, with a promise to unite the country and help it “overcome this season of darkness”.
Biden, a former vice-president and a six-term senator before that, criticised President Donald Trump for his handling of the Covid-19 pandemic that has killed at least 174,000 Americans and deeply impacted the economy.
Biden said on the concluding day of the big event that Trump has “cloaked America in darkness for much too long. Too much anger. Too much fear. Too much division”.
Offering himself as a contrast, Trump’s challenger at the November 3 election said, “Here and now, I give you my word - if you entrust me with the presidency, I will draw on the best of us, not the worst. I will be an ally of the light, not of the darkness... (and) united we can, and will, overcome this season of darkness in America. We will choose hope over fear, facts over fiction, fairness over privilege.”
Calling the upcoming election “life-changing” with the potential to determine America’s future for a long time, the Democratic candidate laid out his case for the White House in stark terms, saying, “Character is on the ballot. Compassion is on the ballot. Decency, science, democracy. They are all on the ballot.”
Biden formally accepted the party’s nomination in a speech from a hall in Wilmington, Delaware.
He was joined by his wife Jill Biden on the stage, alongside his running mate for vice-president, Kamala Harris, and her husband Douglas Emhoff.
1972 LETTER FROM THE ‘BIDEN FROM MUMBAI’
When Joe Biden was elected as a senator in 1972, he had received a letter from Mumbai, then Bombay, with the sender having the same last name as his. The “Biden from Mumbai” had congratulated him and told him they were related, says a PTI report.
Five years ago, the report says, Joe Biden learned that there are indeed five Bidens living in Mumbai. Joe Biden, then 29, wanted to follow up, but couldn’t. The wish remained unfulfilled, but the 77-year-old never misses a chance to narrate the story.
In his address to the Bombay Stock Exchange on July 24, 2013, during his maiden visit to India as the US vice-president, he narrated that story. “I received a letter from a gentleman named Biden from Mumbai, asserting that we were related,” Joe Biden had told the audience.
The report also says that at another speech in Washington, DC, Joe Biden had said that their forefathers were the same, who worked for the East India Company and visited India then.