MILWAUKEE, Wis. (CN) — Seeking a path out of historic chaos and back to the promise of America, Democrats stressed the vitality of voting and threw their support behind former Vice President Joe Biden as he accepted the party's presidential nomination at the close of their convention Thursday night.
Featuring light-hearted moderation from actor and television VP Julia Louis-Dreyfus, established and up-and-coming Democrats made their final case for Biden as the candidate with the character and empathetic spirit necessary to uplift a country under siege by the coronavirus, a massive economic downturn and a nationwide reckoning over racial injustice in the wake of the death of George Floyd.
After emotional video testimonials from his children and grandchildren, Biden, officially nominated by Democrats on Tuesday, accepted the nomination in a 20-minute speech that framed the Nov. 3 election as an opportunity to welcome back America’s better angels and turn away from the distress and division characterizing our national moment.
“It is with great honor and humility that I accept this nomination for President of the United States of America,” Biden said.
The former vice president and veteran senator repeatedly emphasized love, dignity, unity and hope as the quintessentially American virtues that will lead a suffering nation out of what he called “a perfect storm” of four historic crises: the coronavirus pandemic, the worst economic downturn since the Great Depression, the urgent demonstrations for racial justice and the looming existential threat of climate change.
“United we can, and will, overcome this season of darkness in America,” Biden said. “We will choose hope over fear, facts over fiction, fairness over privilege.”
Biden also summoned his longstanding reputation as a lawmaker savvy in the ways of compromise, saying that “while I will be a Democratic candidate, I will be an American president” because “America isn’t just a collection of clashing interests of red states or blue states.”
The Democratic nominee advocated for finding a path of “hope and light” instead of one of “shadow and suspicion,” a call to action Donald Trump is unable or unwilling to answer as “a president who takes no responsibility, refuses to lead, blames others, cozies up to dictators and fans the flames of hate and division.”
Biden pledged that, once elected, he would develop and deploy rapid coronavirus testing with immediately available results as part of a plan he has been developing since March to subdue a pandemic with no end in sight because “we’ll never have our lives back until we deal with this virus” and “no miracle is coming.”
Having lost a wife and daughter to a car accident and a son to brain cancer, Biden spoke directly to those who lost loved ones to Covid-19 as someone literate in the agonies of grief.
“First, know your loved ones may have left this Earth but they never leave your heart…and second, I found the best way through pain and loss and grief is to find purpose,” Biden said.
On a policy level, Biden spoke broadly about creating 5 million dignified, good-paying manufacturing jobs, rebuilding vital infrastructure, dealing with climate change as a job-generating opportunity to become a bastion of clean energy and building on the Affordable Care Act signed into law by his friend and former boss Barack Obama.
After recounting the tragic events in Charlottesville of three years ago and his memories of speaking with George Floyd’s daughter Gianna on the day her father was buried, Biden once again called for love, unity and purpose.
“May history be able to say that the end of this chapter of American darkness began here tonight as love and hope and light joined in the battle for the soul of the nation,” he said, trying to rouse the nation heading into an election he and several other speakers over the course of Thursday night held up as the most consequential in American history.