Jill Biden makes case for her husband in Memphis
Fresh off Joe Biden’s landslide victory in South Carolina Saturday, his wife, Dr. Jill Biden, used her appearance in Memphis Sunday to strike many of the same notes her husband did in his South Carolina victory speech – that the country can rise above the current division and discord if it chooses Biden to be the Democratic nominee for president.
“Thank you for your faith in an idea that’s bigger than any of us and that is that we can build a better nation if we do this together,” Jill Biden said to a crowd of more than 100 at Downtown’s Loflin Yard.
The former second lady of the U.S. stopping in Memphis is among the flurry of presidential campaign activity seen in Shelby County as Super Tuesday approaches this week. Mike Bloomberg, the former mayor of New York City, made a second appearance in Memphis Friday. Shelby County has the state’s largest Democratic voting bloc and had more early voters than any other county — a figure that was up 30% from 2016.
In her short speech, Biden talked of how she had rediscovered her faith on the campaign trail, in South Carolina, after the 2015 death of Joe Biden’s oldest son, Beau. .
“Of all the things that I expected to find on this campaign trail, that was not one of them. There is such power in kindness. It can pull us back to ourselves. It can build the bonds of community and it can mend the fault lines of our broken hearts,” Jill Biden said. “We need a president who knows the power of kindness, a president that can bring this country back together again. And that’s my husband.”
‘South Carolina gave us wings’
The speech, and her comments to the media afterward, reflected the change the South Carolina victory has brought to the Biden campaign, one that struggled in New Hampshire and Iowa. Jill Biden noted the victory — the former vice president’s first in three runs for president — might be among the best moments of his political career.
“It has to be right next to ... being elected vice president, I think . ... South Carolina gave us wings, and now we are going to take flight and hit the rest of the 50 states,” Jill Biden said, noting that she hopes some voters who may have considered other candidates may come home to the Biden campaign.
Biden’s highest-profile local supporter, Shelby County Mayor Lee Harris, joined Jill Biden during her visit Sunday. Much of Shelby County’s political elite has endorsed Bloomberg — who is likely the former vice president’s main competition for the moderate Democratic establishment vote in Shelby County.
Harris, as he has before, talked about how he believes Biden can beat President Donald Trump. The Shelby County mayor singled out the president’s treatment of Memphian Tomeka Hart, the forewoman in the Roger Stone trial. Trump has attacked Hart multiple times on Twitter after she voiced her support for U.S. prosecutors who resigned in the Stone case when Stone’s proposed sentence was watered down.
“We know that Joe Biden is the candidate that can rebuild and fix what’s broken in Washington, D.C . ... Most of us are friends with Tomeka Hart,” Harris said, drawing a contrast with Trump. “We have a president that will take on everyday citizens like Tomeka Hart from the press room of the White House, so that’s the environment we are in and that’s why the stakes could not be higher.”