The former US vice-president Joe Biden has vowed to lead the U.S out of the ‘season of darkness’ promising to be the an ally of the light not the darkness.
Joe Biden said his rival has expressed “too much anger, too much fear, too much division”.
His heartfelt speech was the final stroke of a political career covering nearly half a century.
Biden, 77, is going into the general election campaign with a vividly lead in opinion polls over President Donald Trump, 74.
However, with 75 days to go until the election the Republican president has plenty of time to narrow the space
Speaking from a mostly empty arena in his hometown of Wilmington, Delaware, 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.”
“I’ll be an ally of the light, not the darkness.
“It’s time for us, for we the people, to come together. And make no mistake, united we can and will overcome this season of darkness in America.”
“We’ll choose hope over fear, facts over fiction, fairness over privilege.”
The former U.S vice-president Joe Biden said “character is on the ballot” this November.
“We can choose a path of becoming angrier, less hopeful, more divided, a path of shadow and suspicion,” he said.
“Or, or, we can choose a different path and together take this chance to heal, to reform, to unite. A path of hope and light.”
“This is a life-changing election. This will determine what America is going to look like for a long, long time.”
Biden has vowed to cure a country hit hard by COVID-19 and economic disaster and riven by a reckoning on race.
He continued: “What we know about this president is that if he’s given four more years, he’ll be what he’s been for the last four years.”
“A president who takes no responsibility, refuses to lead, blames others, cosies up to dictators and fan the flames of hate and division.”
“He’ll wake up every day believing the job is all about him, never about you.”
“Is that the America you want for you, your family and your children?”
Directing to America’s COVID-19 death toll, Biden said: “Our current president has failed in his most basic duty to the nation: he has failed to protect us.”
Rephrasing the Irish poet Seamus Heaney, he concluded: “This is our moment to make hope and history rhyme.”
Call it Joe Biden’s “return to normalcy” speech.
That was Warren G Harding’s campaign watchword when he campaigned for president in 1920, with a campaign centered around curing and calming Americans after the hurt of World War One.
In his winning presidential bid, he preached healing, serenity and restoration. To put it in modern terms, an end to all the drama.
Joe Biden bills his campaign as a “battle for the soul of this nation”, but his message on Thursday night, the message of many of the Democratic speakers this week was not far different from Harding’s.
There was a lot of pressure on Biden to deliver with this speech, particularly when Republicans have suggested the 77-year-old was in denial or “diminished”.
At least for one night, the former vice-president Joe Biden who has given rousing stem-winders in the past, hit all his marks. He was livid when he had to be, and reassuring when needed to be.
The U.S former vice-president Joe Biden gave a strong speech, released strongly. If he doesn’t win in November, it won’t be because of anything that occurred on Thursday night or at the convention this entire week which is exactly what a party currently leading in the polls wants.
Biden’s live speech pronounced the grand finale of the four-night Democratic party conference.
However, there was no balloon drop, cheering throngs, or any of the other fanfare and razzamatazz of the typical American party conference, because of the deadly virus pandemic.
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Organizers settled instead for a virtual set piece of mostly pre-recorded speeches divideds into two hours of highly produced programming each evening.
Thursday night’s climax was hosted by actress Julia Louis-Dreyfus, the star of US political satire Veep and a vocal critic of President Donald Trump.
Throughout the evening, Democrats who had challenged Biden for the nomination applauded his leadership in a taped messages.
Some of those former rivals US Senators Bernie Sanders, Elizabeth Warren, Amy Klobuchar and Cory Booker; former congressman Beto O’Rourke, former South Bend, Indiana, mayor Pete Buttigieg and entrepreneur Andrew Yang could be in line for jobs in a Biden administration.
Speakers at the convention over the past three nights have described Trump as unfitted, selfish and a risk to democracy, begging Americans to vote him out of office a tone that Biden sounded.
On Wednesday his running mate, California Senator Kamala Harris, became the first black woman to approve a major party’s vice-presidential nomination.
The daughter of Indian and Jamaican immigrants attacked Trump’s “failure of leadership” and turned up the cries for racial justice that have suffered the nation.
“There is no vaccine for racism. We have got to do the work,” the 55-year-old said, adding: “None of us are free until all of us are free.”
Earlier on Thursday, Trump who has nicknamed his challenger “slow Joe” and “sleepy Joe” – visited Joe Biden’s birthplace of Scranton in the presidential swing-voting state of Pennsylvania.
“Biden is no friend of Pennsylvania,” Trump said, raising allegations his rival of destroying American jobs through global trade deals, the Paris climate accord and clean energy plans.
He said: “If you want a vision of your life under a Biden presidency, think of the smouldering ruins in Minneapolis, the violent anarchy of Portland, the blood-stained sidewalks of Chicago and imagine the mayhem coming to our town and every single town in America.”
As the Democratic nominee was still addressing on Thursday, the Trump 2020 campaign provided a statement, dismissing Biden as “a pawn of the radical leftists”.
Spokesman Tim Murtaugh said: “His name is on the campaign logo, but the ideas come from the socialist extremists.”
Next week, President Donald Trump is expected to approve his nomination as the Republican candidate from the White House lawn during his party’s convention, which has been totally scaled down because of the pandemic.
Biden became a US senator from Delaware in 1973, working his way up to the chairmanship of the chamber’s judiciary and foreign relations committees.
After he failed winning his two White House campaigns, in 1988 and 2008, he was crowned the vice-president to Barack Obama, the nation’s first black president, serving as his deputy from 2009-17.
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Only in February this year, Biden’s third run to become the Democratic White House nominee appeared on the edge of crumbling.
Then black voters in South Carolina’s primary honored him with a victory that made his candidacy appear all but inevitable virtually overnight.
Joe Biden has received questions about his age he would be the oldest president ever chosen. And his lengthy centrist record has come under heavy investigation in a party that has been gravitating leftwards.
However, he was able to rally the unruly progressive and moderate wings of his party to his banner by persuading Democratic voters that he has the best chance of defeating President Donald Trump.
