“And that’s why I can say with confidence there has never been a man or a woman, not me, not Bill, nobody, more qualified than Hillary Clinton to serve as president of the United States of America”. In that time, he said, Barack Obama had become “one of the finest Presidents we have ever had”, and also his friend.
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Virginia Senator Tim Kaine has formally accepted the democratic nomination for vice president. Obama has been itching to take it to Donald Trump, viewing his pessimistic view of the world as a direct rejection of his “hope and change” message from his first campaign. “I think you will probably be rewarded mightily by our press”. More than half said they had no opinion or hadn’t heard of him.
Michael Bloomberg, who was elected mayor of New York City as a Republican, will stand at the Democrats’ mic to speak on behalf of Clinton. “God willing, Hillary Clinton will write the next chapter in that journey”, he said. “But I know what Hillary is passionate about”.
The idea that Biden might have run against her in the primaries, which he put aside after the death of his son Beau, might linger for him-there were delegates at the D.N.C. who undoubtedly would have preferred him to Clinton-but he didn’t even hint at it. “It’s mean spirited. It’s petty”, Biden said. If Trump titled his book “Crippled America” and declared himself the “law-and-order candidate”, the only one who can fix a rigged system and “make America great again”, the themes echoed by speaker after speaker in Philadelphia have been ones of togetherness, diversity, and an emphasis on American values of inclusion rather than a need to close off borders. “I think there’s always been an element of – and Biden is by no means the only one who has felt this – ‘why does she feel entitled to [run] and I can’t?'” His lack of empathy and compassion is summed up in the phrase he’s made famous, ‘You’re fired.’ Think about that; think about everything you learned as a child”, Biden said.
As citizens, we understand that America is not about what can be done for us. “As I recall, we had a revolution to make sure we didn’t have someone who said, ‘I can fix it alone'”.
That is not to say that Biden hid his dismay at the G.O.P.’s institutional embrace of Trumpism.
“What makes us American, what makes us patriots, is what’s in here. It is the nature of democracy that until those votes are cast and the American people have their say, we don’t know”. Would those same voters have trusted Biden more?
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In a fiery speech, Biden panned Trump’s overtures to the middle class, saying, “This guy doesn’t have a clue about the middle class, not a clue”. “We are America, second to none, and we own the finish line”. A month later, with filing deadlines looming and Democratic debates underway, Biden confirmed in a Rose Garden speech, flanked by his wife Jill and President Obama, that the window “has closed”.
