ChicagoA month ago, it was Joe Biden who had to take the stage on Thursday to accept the nomination at the Democratic National Convention. Biden took the stage at the United Center in Chicago on Monday, not as the protagonist, but as the opening act. Now, the Democratic presidential nominee is Kamala Harris, to whom Biden has once again given his endorsement. “Choosing Kamala as my running mate was the best decision I have ever made in my entire career,” the president said.
Biden was given a standing ovation that lasted more than a minute as he stood behind the podium. The cheers and chants of “Thank you, Joe” and “We love you, Joe” were supposed to be a salve for the open wounds within the party. Convincing Biden to step down required a tight siege of his persona that included the party’s top brass. Even when he felt completely isolated, the president did not give in. Not only did the president pass the torch, he received a send-off from the grassroots and the party that had not yet met him.
“You can’t say you love your country just by winning,” Biden said in his first salvo tonight against Donald Trump. Although the speech tonight was expected to be an introduction surrounding Harris’s nomination, the reality is that Biden ended up delivering the speech he would have given as a candidate had he not resigned. He appears to have simply tweaked his original script to fit the current situation. Biden included Harris in the narrative as he touted his presidential accomplishments as the way to continue “forward.”
“We are at a turning point, one of those moments in history when the decisions we make determine the future of our nation,” the president said. The line was taken from his speech after he addressed the nation explaining his resignation. Even then, Biden had sought to distance himself from the image of the deposed monarch and portray himself as a man of service to his country. His resignation was necessary to prevent Trump from returning to power and to save the country.
Biden also recalled the reason he ran for president in 2020: the Charlottesville supremacist marches in 2017. “Neo-Nazis, white supremacists, Ku Klux Klan members, they didn’t bother wearing hoods,” he added. “Hate was marching toward America,” Biden said. “I couldn’t stand on the sidelines.” Conversely, he also pointed to the anti-war protests in Gaza that took place Monday around the convention and acknowledged that they were “right.” Now that he is on his way out and has only five months left in the White House, Biden can afford to be more generous with the protesters.
To make the scene less painful for the president, Harris had also taken the stage minutes earlier to praise his boss once again. “I want to start by celebrating our wonderful president, Joe Biden, who will be speaking tonight,” the Democrat said as the stadium erupted with her surprise appearance. Harris’s approach to the crowd contrasted with Donald Trump’s in Milwaukee. The Republican did not speak until the final day of the convention, as if his words could not be lost in additional remarks. Trump moved like a king, with his grand entrances, and Harris is eager to make an appearance sooner.
The party’s election manifesto, known as the party platform, attests to the speed of change: Biden’s name still appears about 20 times. Trump even mocked it on his Truth social network. “They mentioned a second term for Crooked Joe Biden over 20 times,” the former president wrote. “Shows the platform doesn’t matter to them when they don’t even want to make the change.”
His long farewell to a 50-year political career began that same August night when he addressed the nation to explain his decision, and will continue through the end of his presidency. An example of his gradual detachment from politics is the fact that Biden will not be at the convention for the rest of the days, but after his speech he will fly on Air Force One to California for a vacation for the rest of the week.
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