2020
CONVENTIONS
Biden just made it a lot harder for Republicans
to tag him 'Slow Joe'
The Democratic nominee answered his doubters by
delivering the biggest speech of his life without a hitch.
By NATASHA
KORECKI and CHRISTOPHER CADELAGO
08/21/2020
01:27 AM EDT
WILMINGTON,
Del. — In a campaign riddled with verbal gaffes and setbacks, where his
cognitive abilities were questioned and his debate performances criticized, Joe
Biden stepped up to the lectern and delivered the biggest speech of his life
without a hitch.
That in and
of itself was no small feat for Biden, known for veering off script or tripping
on his words in a way that party Democrats worried could play into the
caricature put forward by Donald Trump and Republicans.
But the
Democratic nominee appeared at ease as he struck somber notes about the
coronavirus pandemic, at once grieving with those who lost loved ones and
promising he would take decisive action if elected in November.
“Look, I
understand. I understand how hard it is to have any hope right now. On this summer
night let me take a moment to speak to those of you who have lost the most. I
have some idea how it feels to lose someone you love,” Biden said. “I know that
deep black hole that opens up in the middle of your chest and you feel like
you're being sucked into it. I know how mean, cruel, and unfair life can be
sometimes.”
His remarks
featured a greatest hits of lines he has used again and again on the campaign
trail. From learning how to handle loss, to his first reaction to Trump’s
remarks about white supremacists marching in Charlottesville, to the lessons
his father taught him, the messages and even precise phrases were familiar to
Biden, likely aiding his smooth delivery.
Biden also
wove in a long list of reasonable-sounding policy prescriptions, but he
elevated the importance of character, decency and compassion. By turns, he
delivered less a celebratory convention speech than a premature inauguration or
State of the Union address.
As the
former vice president looked to cameras, he stood before a dark room, where
reporters, wearing face masks, sat in chairs set up six feet apart from one
another. Biden had been waiting more than a half-century to give this speech.
It came on the last day of a virtual convention where speakers and videos
humanized the 77-year-old career politician as a wellspring of empathy — a
decent family man — and someone who would restore a sense of normalcy in
America and order in the world.
By addressing
the somber mood of the nation and reaching out to those who suffered loss from
the pandemic, Biden sought to distinguish his style of leadership from Trump,
who’s long been criticized for failing to memorialize those who died from the
virus.
“Here and
now I give you my word,” Biden said. “If you entrust me with the presidency, I
will draw on the best of us, not the worst. I'll be an ally of the light, not
the darkness.”
Biden
devoted plenty of time to hitting Trump. But his aides, suspicious of news
headlines that reflectively focus on the president, stressed that criticizing
Trump wasn’t the main point of the speech. Biden lingered for long stretches on
optimism and urged Americans to push past partisanship.
Biden's
commanding delivery could make it more difficult for Trump to paint him as
staggering and senile (“Slow Joe”) at the Republican convention next week. At
the same time, Biden’s focus on middle-of-the-road policies complicates Trump’s
attempts to tag his ticket as pawns of the radical left.
While Biden
put Trump’s caricatures to rest, at least until the debates, he also validated
the gut feelings of Democratic primary voters who elected him over younger,
flashier, or more progressive options. He’d pitched himself as the “safe,”
conventional choice, but his appearances sometimes still feel like watching a
veteran tightrope-walker trying to stay balanced.
After his
remarks concluded, it was Biden who seemed relieved.
Democrats
swapped in fireworks for the traditional balloon drop to mark the close of
events. In the most celebratory moment of the night, Biden stood on a stage
outside, American flags in the backdrop. His wife Jill stood beside him along
with his newly-minted running mate, Kamala Harris, and her husband, Doug
Emhoff. On a warm summer night, they looked up at the explosion of colors in
the sky, as a rowdy crowd at the drive-in convention site cheered.
It was a
moment of exuberance and Biden appeared playful.
When a
reporter called out to ask how he was feeling, Biden briefly pulled down his
face mask and shouted: “Welcome to Wilmington!”
2020
CONVENTIONS
Biden finally has his big moment
The former vice president — in his third White House
run — set himself apart from the president he served and the one he hopes to
unseat.
By DAVID
SIDERS
08/20/2020
07:08 PM EDT
Updated:
08/21/2020 12:32 AM EDT
https://www.politico.com/news/2020/08/20/dnc-convention-thursday-399585
For more
than a decade, Joe Biden had been defined by association — to the president he
worked for and, in its contrast, to the one he is trying to unseat.
On
Thursday, Biden set himself apart from them both.
Biden,
accepting the Democratic Party’s nomination for president on the convention’s
final night, expanded on the searing indictment delivered Wednesday by former
President Barack Obama and offered his own blistering criticism of President
Donald Trump.
And in a
campaign that has served almost singularly as a referendum on Trump, he cast
his candidacy as an affirmative alternative — a “path of hope and light.”
“We can
choose a path of becoming angrier, less hopeful, more divided, a path of shadow
and suspicion,” Biden said. “Or we can choose a different path and together
take this chance to heal, to reform, to unite.”
Much of
Biden’s speech recalled the opening of his campaign 16 months ago when, looking
past a league of primary competitors, he positioned himself as the moral
antithesis to Trump.
“I’ll be a
president that will stand with our allies and friends and make it clear to our
adversaries the days of cozying up to dictators is over,” he said on Thursday.
“Under President Biden, America will not turn a blind eye to Russian bounties
on the heads of American soldiers. Nor will I put up in foreign interference in
our most sacred democratic exercise, voting.”
The
president, Biden said tonight, has “cloaked America in darkness for much too
long. Too much anger. Too much fear, too much division.”
Biden’s
critique of Trump was broader than Obama’s appeal on Wednesday to democratic
norms. And it served to establish Biden’s own vision of a post-Trump era.
It is in
the nation’s “darkest moments that we’ve made our greatest progress, that we
found the light,” he said. “And I believe we’re poised to make progress again.”
In truth,
the bar for Biden was low. The reason that the Democratic National Convention
has focused all week on Biden’s more basic traits — he is a “decent man,” “not perfect,”
“really good” — is because his opponent, President Donald Trump, is deeply
unpopular.
But there
is value in definition, which can help to brace a candidate against negative
attacks. And Biden did more to define himself on Thursday than he ever had
before. There was the personal – testimony from his children Hunter and Ashley
and public remarks Beau Biden made before he died.
In his own
speech, Biden said, “Here and now I give you my word: If you entrust me with
the presidency, I will draw on the best of us, not the worst.”
Yes, Kamala
Harris is suddenly the heir apparent, and even her detractors largely agree she
owns the likeliest path to the Democratic Party’s presidential nomination the
next time it’s up for grabs, whether that’s in 2024 or 2028.
But as
Biden’s unusual path through the primaries demonstrated this year, there’s no
such thing as a clean shot in presidential politics. If Biden loses in
November, Harris’ stock will plummet. If Biden wins but runs again and loses in
2024, same thing. And no matter what, other party stars will want to make a run
for it.
“[Michigan
Gov. Gretchen] Whitmer’s not going to run? [Gavin] Newsom’s not going to run?”
one Democratic strategist asked incredulously.
On
Thursday, Newsom, the California governor, came on screen just before the 9
p.m. hour, after wildfires ravaging his state forced a reconsideration of his
initial, planned appearance. Standing in front of a tree, he said was “a mile
or so away from one” of the fires.
Cory
Booker, Pete Buttigieg and other failed 2020 candidates made more traditional appearances.
The evening featured a gaggle of Biden’s former competitors all heaping praise
on him.
Harris is
not Dan Quayle. But consider how far his once-ascendant career had fallen by
1999, when the former vice president couldn’t even make it to Iowa caucus day.
Ending his presidential campaign that year, Quayle said, "There's a time
to stay and there's a time to fold. There's a time to know when to leave the
stage.”
Even if
Harris doesn’t wind up on a losing ticket, Quayle demonstrated, too, that there
are other ways to stumble. And no one can say with certainty where the
progressive movement will be four or eight years from now, or how Harris will
be viewed within it.
“We thought
2020 was nuts," a Democratic strategist who works closely with major party
donors wrote in a text message. "Just wait for ’24.”
For all the
ways Democrats hammer Donald Trump, one of the more effective lines of attack
this week has been the contrast between the blue-collar workers and a president
who never was.
“I’m here
because a union job lifted my family out of poverty and into the middle class,”
Sen. Cory Booker said. Or as Sen. Tammy Baldwin asked, “Do we want to be a
country where millionaires get to dodge taxes or one where working families get
a break?”
If the
connection wasn’t abundantly clear, former President Barack Obama set the table
the previous night.
“I did
hope, for the sake of our country, that Donald Trump might show some interest
in taking the job seriously,” Obama said. “But he never did."
And he was
followed by Sen. Kamala Harris, who said in her acceptance speech of tackling
racism: “We’ve got to do the work.”
A Hunter
backfire?
It was the
DNC programming Republicans had been thirsting for: Hunter Biden, Joe Biden’s
son, who Republicans are investigating for ties to Ukraine. But paired with
Biden’s daughter Ashley, Hunter Biden delivered one of the most direct,
personal endorsements Biden could have hoped for.
Biden, his
son said, will “make your grandkids feel what they have to say matters.”
During the
primary, there was little Biden seemed to detest more than questions about his
son’s work for a Ukrainian gas company while he was vice president. Biden
called it a “distraction” from Trump’s attempts to get the Bidens investigated
by Ukrainian authorities, which led to the president’s impeachment.
It’s
probably a no-win issue, though some Republicans seem to disagree — at least
the ones wearing the “Where’s Hunter?” T-shirts. On Thursday, the Trump
campaign released an ad attacking Hunter Biden.
On one
hand, according to a POLITICO/Morning Consult poll in February, a majority of
voters (52 percent) believe it was inappropriate for Hunter Biden to have
worked for the gas company Burisma. But that judgment hasn’t reflected back on
Joe Biden much, despite Trump’s efforts.
Conventions
are changed forever
In a
political climate as pitched as it is, the banter between Julia Louis-Dreyfus
and Andrew Yang was probably a mistake.
But that’s
curable. For four days, the DNC went largely without a glitch. And the future
of national conventions will change forever.
The parties
will go back to in-person gatherings, of course. But conventions had largely
become infomercials before the coronavirus. The pandemic then took that
evolution to the extreme and tested its effectiveness.
Most
significantly, the virtual format this week allowed the DNC to rigorously
control its message, pre-recording politicians’ statements and training the
camera — and the public’s focus — exclusively on them. There were no protesters
to pan to, and there was little room for unforced errors.
Some of
that will be lost when in-person gatherings return, but not all. The filming of
regular Americans in their natural habitats was, on balance, more interesting
and effective than putting them on a stage.
In many
ways, said Tom Perez, the DNC chairman, the virtual convention was a “more
accurate reflection of where our country is than any traditional convention
could have been.”
Schools are
going hybrid. Future convention organizers may take a lesson from that and try
to do the same.
“This
convention, which started kind of as a, feeling like a … public access cable
show from the 1980s, suddenly has become must-watch TV, from the calamari to
the characters, from the moving stories to the music that is hitting us,” Eric
Garcetti, the Los Angeles mayor and a co-chair of Biden’s campaign, said on a
call with reporters Thursday morning. “This is the best convention I’ve ever
seen.”
The Trump
effect
The
narrative will shift markedly next week, when attention shifts to the
Republican National Convention.
But the
bracketing that used to work for Trump, like the rallies he held during the
Democratic primaries, hasn’t had the same oomph this week. And timing has not
been the president’s friend.
On Thursday
morning, Steve Bannon, a former senior White House adviser to Trump, was
indicted by a federal grand jury in New York on charges of conspiracy to commit
wire fraud and money laundering in connection with a private effort to build
sections of a wall along the U.S.-Mexico border.
Trump
claimed he didn't "know anything about the project at all."
At a
campaign event in Pennsylvania hours before Biden’s speech, near the former
vice president’s hometown of Scranton, Trump lit into his rival, saying, “If
you want a vision of your life under a Biden presidency, think of the
smoldering ruins in Minneapolis, the violent anarchy of Portland, the
bloodstained sidewalks of Chicago and imagine the mayhem coming to our town and
every single town in America.”
Trump said
sarcastically, per a pool report, “Slow Joe will speak at the Democratic
convention and I’m sure he’ll just knock them dead.”
But even
Republicans are skeptical of what the Trump show will all add up to this year.
One prominent GOP strategist wrote in an email, “It’s pathetic. QAnon,
Goodyear, Bannon, a complete mess.” The strategist continued: “POTUS needs
attention on Biden instead of trying to refocus on himself.”
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