Biden wins nomination:
California delegates deliver their votes from a beach.
Six months after Joe Biden’s third run for the presidency was on the verge of oblivion, Democratic delegates to the party’s virtual convention nominated him Tuesday to challenge President Trump in November.
In what Democratic Party Chairman Tom Perez accurately described as a “definitely unconventional roll call,” delegates gave the vote breakdowns for Biden and Bernie Sanders not from a convention floor, but from their homestate settings.
Rep. Barbara Lee of Oakland and Hilda Solis, a Los Angeles County supervisor, stood on Cabrillo Beach in San Pedro (Los Angeles County), reminded viewers that California is home to Biden running mate Kamala Harris, and delivered the state’s vote of 263 votes for Biden and 231 for Sanders. The Vermont senator won the state’s March 3 primary, but unpledged delegates helped tip the vote to Biden.
When the final numbers came in, the convention cameras flipped to Biden in Delaware and jumped to people around the country applauding his nomination.
“Thank you very much,” Biden said. “It means the world to me and I’ll see you on Thursday,” when he will make the speech accepting the nomination.
It’s a speech he never got to give in 1988 or 2008, his two previous, unsuccessful runs, and after he badly lost the first three states in this year’s primary voting, it looked like he might fall short again.
Then Biden turned it around in the South Carolina primary, won most Super Tuesday states even as he lost California, and quickly wrapped up the race as the coronavirus pandemic descended on the nation and turned politics upside down along with the rest of public life.
There was plenty of symbolism in the nomination.
Biden was nominated by Jacquelyn Brittany, a security guard at the New York Times building who met him when he was taking the elevator up to ask for an endorsement from the newspaper that he didn’t get.
But a video of him interacting with Brittany went viral as an example of Biden’s interest in all the people he meets, the sort of “every guy Joe” the Democrats want to contrast to Trump.
New York Rep. Alexandria OcasioCortez, one of the nation’s bestknown progressives, got 90 seconds to second Sanders’ nomination.
“In a time when millions of people in the United States are looking for deep systemic solutions to our crises of mass evictions, unemployment, and lack of health care, and espíritu del pueblo and out of a love for all people, I hereby second the nomination of Sen. Bernard Sanders,” she said.
Zenaida Huerta, a 22yearold from Whittier (Los Angeles County), was part of a group of young delegates who gathered petition signatures demanding that OcasioCortez get more speaking time. They were angry that a Republican, former Ohio Gov. John Kasich, was given more than three minutes Monday night while OcasioCortez, who has been a breakout star of the firstterm House members, received less than two.
Huerta said a virtual convention “is not really conducive to the type of energy the Democrats really need going into November. So we were trying to remedy that in other ways, like having more speaking time for AOC, who is an inspiration to young delegates and Latino delegates.”
Biden’s wife, Jill, capped the evening by speaking from a classroom in Brandywine High School in Wilmington, Del., where she once taught. She recounted how her husband lost his first wife and young daughter in an automobile accident shortly after Biden was elected to the Senate in 1972.
“How do you make a broken family whole?” Jill Biden said. “The same way you make a nation whole. With love and understanding — and with small acts of compassion. With bravery. With unwavering faith.”
Cindy McClain, widow of Arizona Sen. John McCain, narrated a video segment detailing what was called “an unlikely friendship” between her Republican husband and Biden. Like Kasich’s speech Monday, it was an attempt to win Republicans and centrists dissatisfied with Trump. So was an endorsement by Colin Powell, who served as secretary of state under GOP President George W. Bush.