Delegates across U.S. cast support to Biden
Party’s virtual nomination unconventional
NEW YORK — Democrats formally nominated Joe Biden as their 2020 presidential nominee Tuesday night, as party officials and activists from across the nation gave the former vice president their support during his party’s all-virtual national convention.
The moment marked a political high point for Biden, who had sought the presidency twice before.
Denied the chance to assemble in Milwaukee, Democratic activists and dignitaries cast their votes from places across all 50 states and from the American territories and the District of Columbia; from the Edmund Pettus Bridge in Selma, Ala., to the iconic welcome sign in Las Vegas; and far beyond to the shores of Guam, “where America’s day begins.” They offered a grand mosaic of
personal identities and experiences, many speaking in raw terms about their personal aspirations and adversities.
The roll call of convention delegates formalized what has been clear for months since Biden took the lead in the primary elections’ chase for the nomination. It came as he worked to demonstrate the breadth of his coalition for a second-consecutive night, this time blending support from his party’s elders and fresher faces to make the case that he has the experience and energy to repair what he sees as the chaos that President Donald Trump has created at home and abroad.
Former President Bill Clinton, former Secretary of State John Kerry and former Republican Secretary of State Colin Powell were among the heavy hitters on a schedule that emphasized a simple theme: Leadership matters. Former President Jimmy Carter, now 95 years old, also made an appearance.
“Donald Trump says we’re leading the world. Well, we are the only major industrial economy to have its unemployment rate triple,” Clinton said. “At a time like this, the Oval Office should be a command center. Instead, it’s a storm center. There’s only chaos.”
“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,” Clinton said.
He added of the pandemic, “Denying, distracting and demeaning works great if you’re trying to entertain and inflame. But in a real crisis, it collapses like a house of cards.”
The former president spoke early in the evening, shortly after Carter. Clinton’s remarks went beyond the blistering speech he delivered during his 2016 convention address — when he helped the party formally choose his wife, Hillary, as its presidential nominee.
Clinton stressed what he described as Trump’s economic failures during the coronavirus’s spread, arguing that the fallout on families and businesses wouldn’t be nearly as dire had Trump not so bungled the federal government’s response.
ARRAY OF THEMES
The second night of the Democratic National Convention straddled themes of national security, presidential accountability and continuity between the past and future leaders of the party. Like the opening night on Monday, it took the form of a kind of political variety show.
Hosted by actress Tracee Ellis Ross, the program skipped between recorded tributes from political luminaries, personal testimonials from activists and voters, and various forms of music and entertainment.
Tuesday’s speaking program underscored Biden’s challenge as he seeks to inspire a new generation of voters. While the Democratic leaders of yesteryear can point to experience and achievement, many of them are aging white men.
Just 77 days before the election, Biden has neither history nor enthusiasm on his side.
Just one incumbent president has been defeated in the past four decades. And Biden’s supporters consis- tently report that they’re motivated more by opposition to Trump than excitement about Biden, a 77-year-old lifelong politician.
Biden formally captured his party’s nomination Tuesday night after being nominated by three people, two Delaware lawmakers and 31-year-old Black security guard who became a viral sensation after blurting out “I love you” to Biden in a New York City elevator.
Delegates from across the country then pledged their support for Biden in a video montage that featured Democrats in places like Alabama’s Edmund Pettis Bridge, a beach in Hawaii and the headwaters of the Mississippi River.
In the opening of the convention’s second night, a collection of younger Democrats, including former Georgia lawmaker Stacey Abrams and New York Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, were given a few minutes to shine. But overall, there was little room on Tuesday’s program for the younger stars of the party’s far-left wing.
“In a democracy, we do not elect saviors. We cast our ballots for those who see our struggles and pledge to serve,” said Abrams, 46, who emerged as a national player during her unsuccessful bid for governor in 2018 and was among those considered to be Biden’s running mate.
She added: “Faced with a president of cowardice, Joe Biden is a man of proven courage.”
On a night that Biden was formally receiving his party’s presidential nomination, the convention also was introducing his wife, Jill Biden, to the nation as the prospective first lady.
HISTORIC FORMAT
Biden is fighting unprecedented logistical challenges to deliver his message during an all-virtual convention this week as the coronavirus epidemic continues to claim hundreds of American lives each day and wreaks havoc on the economy.
The former vice president became his party’s nominee from a prerecorded roll-call vote from delegates in all 50 states. The four-day convention will culminate on Thursday when he accepts that nomination inside a mostly empty Delaware convention hall. His running mate, California Sen. Kamala Harris, today will become the first minority-group woman to accept a major party’s vice presidential nomination.
Until then, Biden is presenting what he sees as the best of his sprawling coalition to the American electorate in a format unlike any other in history. There is no live audience for any of the speakers, who have so far delivered their remarks standing or seated alone in mostly prerecorded videos.
For a second night, the Democrats featured Republicans.
Powell, who served as secretary of state under George W. Bush and appeared at multiple Republican conventions in years past, was endorsing the Democratic candidate. In a video released ahead of his speech, he said, “Our country needs a commander in chief who takes care of our troops in the same way he would his own family. For Joe Biden, that doesn’t need teaching.”
Powell joins the widow of the late Arizona Sen. John McCain, Cindy McCain, who narrated a video about Biden’s relationship with her husband.
No one on the program Tuesday night has a stronger connection to the Democratic nominee than his wife, Jill, a longtime teacher, who was speaking from her former classroom at Brandywine High School near the family home in Wilmington, Del.
“You can hear the anxiety that echoes down empty hallways. There’s no scent of new notebooks or freshly waxed floors,” she said of the school in excerpts of her speech before turning to the nation’s challenges at home. “How do you make a broken family whole? The same way you make a nation whole. With love and understanding — and with small acts of compassion. With bravery. With unwavering faith.”
PARTY STALWARTS
The Democrats’ party elders played a prominent role throughout the night.
Clinton hasn’t held office in two decades. Kerry, 76, was the Democratic presidential nominee back in 2004 when the youngest voters this fall were still in diapers. And Carter is 95 years old.
Kerry said in an excerpt of his remarks, “Joe understands that none of the issues of this world — not nuclear weapons, not the challenge of building back better after covid, not terrorism and certainly not the climate crisis — none can be resolved without bringing nations together.”
Biden’s team did not give the night’s coveted keynote address to a single fresh face, preferring instead to pack the slot with more than a dozen Democrats in their 20s, 30s and 40s. The younger leaders included Abrams, Rep. Conor Lamb., D-Pa., and the president of the Navajo Nation, Jonathan Nez.
Clinton, a fixture of Democratic conventions for nearly three decades, addressed voters for roughly five minutes in a speech recorded at his home in Chappaqua, N.Y.
In addition to railing against Trump’s leadership, Clinton called Biden “a go-towork president.” Biden, Clinton continued, is “a man with a mission: to take responsibility, not shift the blame; concentrate, not distract; unite, not divide.”
Clinton, who turns 74 today, is three years younger than Biden and remains a force within the party — even though it has left behind many of the market-based changes and centrism he popularized in the 1990s.
Former California Gov. Jerry Brown, who was unsuccessful in his run against Clinton for the Democratic
nomination in 1992, said it’s impressive how the former president has continued to carve out a role for himself in Democratic politics. But nothing lasts forever.
“If you hang around long enough,” the 82-year-old Brown said, “you won’t fit.”
It remains to be seen whether the unconventional convention will give Biden the momentum he’s 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 on-site nominating party four years ago.
An estimated 18.7 million people watched coverage between 10 and 11 p.m. 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.
Biden’s campaign said an additional 10.2 million streamed the convention online Monday night.
“We are producing a digital convention, and people are watching,” Biden spokesman T.J. Ducklo tweeted.
Meanwhile, Trump continued to court battleground voters in an effort to distract from Biden’s convention. Appearing in Arizona near the Mexican border earlier in the day, the Republican president claimed a Biden presidency would trigger “a flood of illegal immigration like the world has never seen.”