DEMOCRATS MAKE IT OFFICIAL: IT’S BIDEN VS TRUMP
Jill Biden, Bill Clinton, Jimmy Carter were among the prominent names at the Democratic National Convention
WASHINGTON: Democrats officially nominated former US vice-president Joe Biden as their candidate for president on the second night of the party’s national convention in which two former presidents, two former secretaries of state and his wife, Jill Biden, spoke of him as the unifying leader America needs.
“Thank you very, very much from the bottom of my heart,” Biden said from his home in Delaware. “Thank you all, it means the world to me and my family and I will see you on Thursday.” That’s when he will deliver the acceptance speech.
Speakers on the second day of the Democratic National Convention included Jimmy Carter, Bill Clinton, John Kerry, Colin Powell and Chuck Hagel.
Former president Clinton, whose participation in the convention had been opposed by some Democrats because of past allegations of sexual harassment, launched a blistering attack on President Donald Trump for his handling of the pandemic. He said the Oval Office should operate like a command centre. “Instead, it’s a storm centre. There’s only chaos,” Clinton added.
Former secretary of state Powell, a high-profile Republican at the Democratic event, said, “Today, we are a country divided, and we have a president doing everything in his power to make it that way and keep us that way.”
Kerry, also a former secretary of state, slammed Trump over the way in which he conducts foreign relations.
Jill Biden, who headlined the party’s big night, spoke of the man she has known and how he as someone who had lost his first wife and daughter to an accident and then a son to brain cancer understood the challenges confronting Americans in these uncertain times.
“The burdens we carry are heavy, and we need someone with strong shoulders. I know that if we entrust this nation to Joe, he will do for your family what he did for ours: bring us together and make us whole,” she said.