Biden gets virtual send off for his fight to become president
The Democratic Party this week formally nominated Joe Biden as its candidate in the US presidential election, during a very unconventional democratic convention. But will it give him the momentum he needs in the election race? Steve Peoples, Michelle L Price and Alexandra Jaffe report...
PARTY elders, a new generation of politicians and voters in every state joined in an extraordinary, pandemic-cramped virtual convention this week to send Joe Biden into the general election campaign to oust President Donald Trump.
For someone who has spent more than three decades eyeing the presidency, the moment on Tuesday night was the realisation of a longsought goal.
But it occurred in a way that the 77-year-old could not have imagined as the coronavirus pandemic prompted profound change across the country and in his presidential campaign.
Instead of a Milwaukee convention hall as initially planned, the roll call of convention delegates played out in a combination of live and recorded video feeds from American landmarks packed with meaning: Alabama’s Edmund Pettus Bridge, the headwaters of the Mississippi River, a Puerto Rican community still recovering from a hurricane and Washington’s Black Lives Matter Plaza.
Mr Biden celebrated his new status as the Democratic nominee alongside his wife and grandchildren in a Delaware school library.
His wife of more than 40 years, Jill Biden, later spoke of her husband in deeply personal terms, reintroducing the lifelong politician as a man of deep empathy, faith and resilience to American voters less than three months before votes are counted.
“There are times when I couldn’t imagine how he did it – how he put one foot in front of the other and kept going,” she said.
“But I’ve always understood why he did it. He does it for you.”
She also pushed back against Mr Trump’s claims her husband lacks the stamina to serve as president and called a Trump campaign ad questioning his mental fitness “ridiculous”.
Speaking on NBC’s Today show, Mrs Biden said her husband is “on the phone every single minute of the day” talking to governors. She said Mr Biden spends time on Zoom chats and doing fundraisers and briefings and “he doesn’t stop from nine in the morning till 11 at night”.
The virtual gathering has seen a succession of headline-grabbing moments including Kamala Harris accepting her nomination as Mr Biden’s running mate on Wednesday, the first black woman to join a major party ticket.
And former president Barack Obama delivered a keynote speech as part of his stepped-up efforts to defeat his successor.
On Wednesday night he warned American democracy could falter if Donald Trump is re-elected in the autumn.
He pleaded with voters to “embrace your own responsibility as citizens – to make sure that the basic tenets of our democracy endure”.
Mr Obama warned: “Because that’s what is at stake right now. Our democracy.”
Speaking from the Museum of the American Revolution in Philadelphia, the former president said: “Donald Trump hasn’t grown into the job, because he can’t.
Describing Mr Biden as his brother, he continued: “I have sat in the Oval Office with both of the men who are running for president.
“I never expected that my successor would embrace my vision or continue my policies. I did hope, for the sake of our country, that Donald Trump might show some interest in taking the job seriously.”
Mr Obama’s confidants say that the former president’s support for Mr Biden is unequivocal, but he worries about enthusiasm among younger voters, particularly younger voters of colour.
Democrats concede that one of the reasons Mr Trump won the presidency in 2016 was because those voters did not show up in the same large numbers as when Mr Obama was on the ballot.
Throughout their convention, the Democrats have summoned a collective urgency about the dangers of Mr Trump as president.
In 2016, they dismissed and sometimes trivialised him. Now they are casting him as an existential threat to the country. The tone shift signals that the campaign between Mr Trump and Mr Biden, already expected to be among the most negative of the past half century, will be filled with rancour and recrimination.
Over the course of this week, former president Bill Clinton and exsecretary of state John Kerry – plus former Republican secretary of state Colin Powell – have been among the heavy hitters on a schedule that emphasised a simple theme: leadership matters.
Another former president, Jimmy Carter, now 95 years old, also made a brief appearance.
Some of them delivered attacks against Mr Trump that were unusually personal, all in an effort to establish Mr Biden as the competent, moral counter to the Republican president.
“Donald Trump inherited a growing economy and a more peaceful world,” Mr Kerry said.
“And like everything else he inherited, he bankrupted it. When this president goes overseas, it isn’t a goodwill mission. It’s a blooper reel.”
Mr Clinton said Mr Trump’s Oval Office is a place of chaos, not a command centre.
“If you want a president who defines the job as spending hours a day watching TV and zapping people on social media, he’s your man,” Mr Clinton said. It remains to be seen whether the unconventional convention will give Mr Biden the momentum he is looking for.
Preliminary estimates show that television viewership for the first night of the virtual convention was down compared with the opening of Hillary Clinton’s onsite nominating party four years ago.
An estimated 18.7 million people watched coverage between 10pm and 11pm on ABC, CBS, NBC, CNN, Fox News Channel and MSNBC, the Nielsen company said.
Four years ago, the opening night drew just under 26 million viewers.
Hillary Clinton, who lost the 2016 election to Mr Trump, implored Democrats to turn out in larger numbers in November to block the president’s re-election.
The former US secretary of state said: “For four years, people have said to me: ‘I didn’t realise how dangerous he was.’ ‘I wish I could go back and do it over.’ Or worst: ‘I should have voted.’
“Well, this can’t be another woulda coulda shoulda election.
“Vote like our lives and livelihoods are on the line – because they are.”