Former vice president Joe Biden assured on Friday that he’d secured the required delegates to grab the Democratic nomination and face Donald Trump in November’s US presidential election.
“Folks, tonight we secured the 1,991 delegates needed to win the Democratic nomination. I’m going to spend every day fighting to earn your vote so that, together, we can win the battle for the soul of this nation,” the former vice president said on Twitter.
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Joe Biden passed the 1,991 thresholds to win his party’s nomination as counting continued from Tuesday’s round of Democratic primaries. Biden had been the presumptive Democratic rep. since Vermont Senator, Bernie Sanders logged out of the race in April and endorsed his onetime rival’s run at the White House.
Joe Biden thrived on the effects of the current protest over George Floyd’s death to reach the required threshold.
Currently, Floyd’s death has reignited long-felt anger over police killings of African-Americans and prompted a nationwide wave of civil unrest unlike any seen in the US since Martin Luther King Jr’s 1968 assassination.
“This is a difficult time in America’s history. And Donald Trump’s angry, divisive politics is no answer. The country is crying out for leadership. Leadership that can unite us. Leadership that can bring us together,” Biden wrote in a post on Medium.
Equal justice
As it is, Joe Biden’s response over the protest has been in sharp contrast to President Trump who threatened to deploy the military against American citizens if they continue the protest, a statement that has been widely condemned by political and public figures across the nation
Joe Biden said during his first public speech after coming back from isolation in mid-March because of the virus outbreak, Biden called Floyd’s death a “wake-up call for our nation” and accused Trump of turning the US into a “battlefield riven by old resentments and fresh fears.”
The 77-year-old Biden, who served as deputy for eight years to America’s first black president, Barack Obama, has pledged to tackle “systemic racism” if voted for as president in November.
“We need equal justice, and equal opportunities, for every American now. We need a president who cares about helping us heal, now,” he wrote.
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Joe Biden’s run for the Democratic nomination had previously looked destined for disaster after early losses to the fiery Sanders in Iowa, New Hampshire, and Nevada. But became stronger in South Carolina’s primary in late February on the strength of support from African-American voters, which is a crucial base of Democratic support.
The former vice president will now be expected to name his running mate, after promising to pick a woman. Senator Kamala Harris, a 55-year-old former attorney general of California, is currently one of the front-runners to be Biden’s vice-presidential choice.
Harris, who is of Jamaican and Indian ancestry, was considered a leading contender for the Democratic presidential nomination but dropped out in December after failing to break out of the crowded field.
