While Joe Biden’s name was never far from the lips of the Democratic speakers, Trump’s time in office was fully under the microscope in the night’s opening stages. With the night’s programming centered on the theme “leadership matters,” the keynote speech took an unusual format featuring 17 rising stars in the Democratic Party.
“This year’s choice could not be more clear. America faces a triple threat — a public health catastrophe, an economic collapse and a reckoning with racial justice and inequality,” said Stacey Abrams, a former gubernatorial candidate in Georgia who is seen as one of the young stars of the party. “So our choice is clear, a steady experienced public servant who can lead us out of this crisis just like he’s done before. Or a man who only knows how to deny and distract. A leader who cares about our families or a president who only cares about himself.”
“In a democracy, we do not elect saviors, we cast our ballots for those who see our struggles and pledge to serve,” she added.
Former Deputy Attorney General Sally Yates, who served in the Obama administration and stayed on in the Trump transition, accused the President of attacking every institution from the FBI to the free press and the judiciary to remove checks on his own power.
“Rather than standing up to Vladimir Putin, he fawns over a dictator who’s still trying to interfere in our elections,” Yates said.
“Put simply, he treats our country like it’s his family business—this time bankrupting our nation’s moral authority at home and abroad.”
Former President Bill Clinton’s centrism might be out of step with his party’s leftward march. But he showed the pithy, explanatory political skills that made him a two-term White House resident and helped reelect Barack Obama in lacerating Trump’s performance in the pandemic.
“At first he said the virus was under control and would soon disappear. When it didn’t, he was on TV every day bragging on what a great job he was doing, while our scientists waited to give us vital information. When he didn’t like the expert advice he was given, he ignored it,” Clinton said in a video recorded in his living room in Chappaqua, New York.
“Only when COVID exploded in even more states did he encourage people to wear masks. By then many more were dying. When asked about the surge in deaths, he shrugged and said, ‘It is what it is.’ But did it have to be this way? No.”
Clinton has been a star performer at Democratic conventions since the 1980s but only got around five minutes for his video speech boosting Biden this year. Targeting undecided voters, Clinton said, “If you want a president who defines the job as spending hours a day watching TV and zapping people on social media, (Trump’s) your man. Denying, distracting, and demeaning works great if you’re trying to entertain or inflame. But in a real crisis, it collapses like a house of cards.”
“You know what Donald Trump will do with four more years: blame, bully, and belittle. And you know what Joe Biden will do: build back better.”
The 42nd President’s policies on welfare and crime are now frowned upon by many progressives, represented at the convention on Tuesday night by Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York. And the #MeToo era has cast his affair with White House intern Monica Lewinsky in an even more dubious light.
Yet he still remains one of the party’s most bankable names.
Jill Biden to take center stage
“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,” Jill Biden plans to say, according to excerpts of her speech that were released by the party.
“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 plans to say. “But I’ve always understood why he did it. … He does it for you.”
The former second lady will also speak as a teacher, delivering her speech from Brandywine High School in Wilmington, Delaware, where she taught English. She will speak to the difficulties and uncertainties that many parents are facing as they decide whether to send their children back to school in the middle of a pandemic.
“You can hear the anxiety that echoes down empty hallways,” she will say. “There’s no scent of new notebooks or freshly waxed floors. The rooms are dark and the bright young faces that should fill them are confined to boxes on a computer screen.”
While her husband was vice president, Jill Biden continued to teach English full time at a community college in Virginia. She earned her doctorate in education from the University of Delaware in 2007.
Republican support for Biden again on display
The Senate veterans once traded barbs on foreign policy but bonded across party lines in a friendship dating to when McCain served as a military aide after returning from years as a prisoner in the Vietnam War.
The former vice president delivered a powerful eulogy for his friend at his memorial service after he died of brain cancer in 2018.
“My name is Joe Biden. I’m a Democrat. And I love John McCain,” he said.
The video, entitled “An Unlikely Friendship,” may trigger President Donald Trump, who long feuded with McCain and still brings up his thumbs-down vote three years ago that scuppered a Republican attempt to repeal Obamacare.
Another prominent Republican — former Secretary of State Colin Powell, who served under President George W. Bush — will offer a video testimonial about Biden during Tuesday night’s program as part of the Democrats’ effort to draw in Republicans and independents who are frustrated with Trump’s leadership and his divisive tactics.
Though Powell, who was also chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff under President George H.W. Bush, served under Republican administrations, he has voted for Democrats in the three most recent presidential elections.
In his video message, Powell will say that America needs a commander in chief who will take care of US troops the same way that he would take care of his own family.
“For Joe Biden that doesn’t need teaching, it comes from the experience he shares with millions of military families sending his beloved son off to war and praying to God he would come home safe,” Powell will say in the taped address.
One reason why Trump’s standing had improved in the CNN poll released Sunday was that he had solidified his support among more conservative voters. Back in June, 8% of Republican or Republican-leaning independents said they would back Biden — but in the new poll only 4% planned to support the former vice president.
The poll showed an opportunity for Democrats in the final months, however, because Trump’s voters were more likely to say they could change their minds (12% said they could) than Biden’s (only 7% said so).
This is a breaking story and will be updated.