Indian African American Kamala Harris poised to accept historic VP nomination.
Joe Biden finally got the prize he has been chasing for 32 years as the Democrats made him their presidential nominee with a litany of party stars and a few dissident Republicans trashing his rival President Donald Trump.
The former Vice President, who first tossed his hat into the presidential race in 1988, accepted the nomination from a library at Brandywine on the second night of the virtual Democratic National Convention Tuesday.
“Thank you very, very much from the bottom of my heart,” Biden said in brief remarks before putting his mask back on.
“Thank you all. It means the world to me and my family, and I’ll see you on Thursday,†he said as his grandchildren burst into the library with a pop of brightly colored streamers.
Indian American Sen. Kamala Harris is poised to accept her party’s historic nomination as Biden’s running mate on the third and penultimate night of the Democratic convention Wednesday.
The first Black woman and the first South Asian American to appear on a major-party ticket, Harris will do so during a two-hour session packed with other party luminaries like former president Barack Obama and Trump’s 2016 rival Hillary Clinton.
READ MORE: Road to the White House
Biden officially secured the Democratic nomination for president in a virtual roll call Tuesday night with his wife Jill Biden making the case for him in a closing speech from an empty classroom in a Delaware school.
Without mentioning Trump, she argued that the US needs someone to heal it at a time when the President has sought to divide Americans even in the midst of a deadly coronavirus pandemic that has claimed more than 170,000 American lives.
“The burdens we carry are heavy, and we need someone with strong shoulders,” she said. “I know that if we entrust this nation to Joe, he will do for your family what he did for ours: bring us together and make us whole.â€
Former President Bill Clinton, who has been a star performer at Democratic conventions since the 1980s but got only five minutes for his video speech, trashed Trump’s performance during the pandemic.
“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,†he said.
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.â€
“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.”
The keynote speech on the second night centered on the theme “leadership matters “ took an unusual format, featuring 17 rising stars in the Democratic Party.
Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York, a longtime supporter of Biden’s main primary rival Bernie Sanders, was one of several Democrats who nominated the Democratic Socialist before the virtual roll call at the convention.
Speaking for young progressive activists in the party during a 95-second address, she highlighted the issues that Sanders championed and did not mention Biden.
As on the opening night, the second day also featured a couple of prominent Republicans including former Secretary of State Colin Powell.
In another video, late senator John McCain’s widow Cindy, talked about the cross-party friendship between Biden and the Arizona Republican.
Meanwhile, according to Politico a spate of new polling conducted just before the convention, shows that Biden maintains a clear lead over Trump, though there are signs the race has tightened slightly from earlier in the summer.
The RealClearPolitics average shows Biden ahead by 8 percentage points as of late Sunday — larger than any president’s winning margin of victory since Bill Clinton in 1996 — but down a tick from the 10-point lead he had earlier in the summer.