Biden makes a plea to defend democracy at DNC as he passes baton to Harris

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U.S. President Joe Biden capped the opening day of the Democratic National Convention with a plea for his country to defend its democracy as he sought to pass the baton to Vice-President Kamala Harris.

Less than a month after ending his re-election bid, Mr. Biden delivered Monday’s keynote speech at the United Center in Chicago, swallowing any anger at the party grandees who elbowed him out of the race to help his chosen successor’s whirlwind campaign.

“Democracy has prevailed. Democracy has delivered. And now democracy must be preserved,” he said. “Because of you, we’ve had one of the most extraordinary four years of progress ever. Period. When I say ‘we,’ I mean Kamala and me.”

In his speech, delivered at 10:30 p.m. local time following a marathon convention program, Mr. Biden sought to define his legacy as a president who bolstered the middle class, navigated the country through the shoals of a pandemic and protected it from the autocratic machinations of former President Donald Trump.

The crowd chanted “We Love Joe” as Mr. Biden took the stage, wiping away tears following an introduction from his daughter.

“I love you,” Mr. Biden said in response, his face a mixture of joy and sadness as he faced the cheering crowd, its euphoria set free from the anxiety that had wracked Democrats before he reluctantly quit the race. The 81-year-old bowed out amid mounting concerns that he was suffering from age-related cognitive declines that would cost the party the election.

Both Mr. Biden’s speech and the evening as a whole appeared designed to mark his half-century political career while continuing the surprise momentum created by his abrupt replacement at the top of the ticket by Ms. Harris.

Mr. Biden closed his speech as he has many times before — “God bless you all and may God protect our troops” — but before he could leave the stage, Ms. Harris and her husband, Doug Emhoff, emerged, the new nominee and the outgoing president meeting in an embrace, an unmistakable handing of a torch.

In an unannounced cameo earlier in the evening, the beaming vice-president strode onto the convention stage to praise Mr. Biden. “Joe, thank you for your historic leadership, for your lifetime of service,” she said. “We are forever grateful.”

To loud applause, Ms. Harris declared that “as one people, we are moving forward” and “when we fight, we win.”

The Democrats sought to capitalize on their sudden seeming unity by spotlighting speakers from across their ideological coalition, from establishment figures such as Hillary Clinton to leftist firebrand Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez.

Signs of division were still apparent, however, as pro-Palestinian protesters gathered in city streets and some on the floor of the convention openly criticized Mr. Biden’s continuing military support of Israel.

The party’s central aim was to ride and extend the polling bounce it has seen since Ms. Harris and her running mate, Minnesota Governor Tim Walz, took over the campaign.

Ms. Clinton, the former first lady and secretary of state who narrowly lost her own bid to become the country’s first female president against Mr. Trump in 2016, highlighted Ms. Harris’s historic candidacy.

“Something is happening in America. You can feel it. Something we worked for and dreamed of for a long time,” she said.

“Together, we put a lot of cracks in the highest, hardest glass ceiling. Tonight, tonight so close to breaking through once and for all. On the other side of that glass ceiling is Kamala Harris, raising her hand and taking the oath of office.”

New York Congresswoman Ms. Ocasio-Cortez called Mr. Trump a “two-bit union buster” and vowed Ms. Harris would “lift working people from underneath the boots of greed, trampling on our way of life” as the crowd drowned her out with cheers.

The Vice-President, she said, is also “working tirelessly to secure a ceasefire in Gaza and bring the hostages home.”

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A series of speakers and videos through the evening repeatedly contrasted Mr. Trump’s 34 felony convictions in his New York hush-money trial — as well as his efforts to overturn the 2020 election — with Ms. Harris’s background as a prosecutor.

One segment dealt with Mr. Trump’s Supreme Court justices overturning abortion rights, featuring women who nearly died because doctors in states with abortion bans refused to treat them when they had medical complications during their pregnancies.

On both the convention dais and the floor, the party cast Mr. Biden as the most accomplished single-term president in recent memory. He passed a string of legislation consecrating US$1-trillion for infrastructure building, fighting climate change and building new semi-conductor and auto factories. And he rallied the Western world to help Ukraine stave off Russia’s invasion.

“If you go outside my home right now – this very second – you’ll see infrastructure being done,” said Linda Joseph, a community councillor from Miami-Dade in Florida, where a massive project is under way to build bridges and improve drainage.

Mr. Biden’s last remaining months as president mark “the end of his politics career. But it’s not the end of his life,” Ken Martin, vice-chair of the Democratic National Committee, said in an interview. “No one is in mourning. We’re celebrating all of his accomplishments.”

Ibrahim Coulibaly, a union president from Eugene, Ore., lauded Mr. Biden as possibly the most vocally pro-labour president in history – he was the first to walk a picket line when he joined striking Detroit auto workers last year.

He acknowledged, however, that the President’s time had passed.

“I will miss him. We owe him a lot. But it’s probably time for new energy,” Mr. Coulibaly said.

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Tougher for the party to navigate is Israel’s invasion of the Gaza Strip, on which Mr. Biden has taken persistent criticism over his refusal to stop supplying weapons to Israel.

“Until now, the support that Biden provided to Israel – it’s unlimited,” said Sami Khaldi, a party delegate from Michigan, a key swing state with large Muslim-American and Arab-American populations. Mr. Biden “could have stopped the war a long time ago. We could have saved thousands of lives,” Mr. Khaldi said.

At the convention, activists thrust clipboards toward delegates, asking them to sign support for a ceasefire. By early afternoon on Monday, one activist had gathered eight such commitments.

But Mr. Khaldi, who is from Dearborn, gave credit to Mr. Biden for ceding his candidacy to Ms. Harris, whom he sees as more sensitive to the views of Arab-Americans. “I think Arab-Americans will vote for her in the end,” Mr. Khaldi said. By stepping aside, he believes, Mr. Biden “will save the party.”

The convention, in a first, allowed a Palestinian human-rights discussion onto its convention schedule on Monday, providing a stage for searing condemnation of Israel. What is taking place in Gaza is “genocide. It is the erasure of a people, of their memory, of their history. And we’re enabling it,” said James Zogby, co-founder of the Arab American Institute. (Israel has rejected such charges.)

During Mr. Biden’s speech, about 10 protesters turned their backs on Mr. Biden when he mentioned Gaza, covering their mouths with their hands.

Mr. Biden, who won his first election in 1970, built a brand as a middle-of-the-road establishment politico under the guise of a folksy uncle during his stints in the senate and as Barack Obama’s vice-president.

In 2020, he won as an inoffensive compromise candidate uniting everyone intent on getting Mr. Trump out of office before pivoting in office to try to pass a major domestic agenda.

He reluctantly quit the race last month after weeks of mounting pressure that followed a catastrophic debate performance against Mr. Trump.

In Ms. Harris, the former California prosecutor and senator whom Mr. Biden tapped for the vice-presidency four years ago, the party is largely sticking to the President’s political positioning.

The Democratic platform published this week still contained numerous references to a “second Biden term” in the White House.

But the 59-year-old’s more energetic delivery and social media virality – as well as her history-making as the country’s first woman, Black American and person of South Asian descent to serve as vice-president – has jolted the campaign.

The party has also pivoted rhetorically from Mr. Biden’s dire warnings about the threat he says Mr. Trump poses to democracy to the more humorous characterization, pushed by Mr. Walz, that the Republican ticket is simply “weird.”

Even the scene inside the hall often suggested that Mr. Biden was fading to a footnote. At a merchandise shop, two T-shirts with Biden designs were crowded out by clothing, stickers and pins featuring the woman now standing in his stead – including “Frat Bros for Harris” buttons.

With a report from Shannon Proudfoot in Chicago