Jill Biden, a longtime college English professor, is set Tuesday night to try to persuade U.S. voters why they should elect her husband of 43 years, former Vice President Joe Biden, as the country’s next president.
Jill Biden has played an active behind-the-scenes role in her husband’s third run for the presidency over three decades. Aides say she offered her thoughts on his choice of a vice presidential running mate before he chose California Senator Kamala Harris last week, making Harris the first Black and South Asian American to be picked for a spot on a national U.S. political ticket.
But with the coronavirus pandemic severely limiting public political appearances this year, Jill Biden’s speech on the second night of the virtual Democratic National Convention will be her televised introduction to millions of American voters, presenting her as a potential first lady for the next four years and offering insights on how she thinks her husband would act as president.
Also making the case Tuesday for Joe Biden in his campaign against Republican President Donald Trump will be two former Democratic presidents — Bill Clinton and Jimmy Carter — as well as 2004 presidential nominee John Kerry and late President John F. Kennedy’s daughter, Caroline.
Two current Washington political figures, Senate Democratic Leader Chuck Schumer and progressive congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, both frequent and vocal Trump critics, are also speaking on Biden’s behalf.
There will be a truncated roll call of states to nominate Biden and Harris as the Democratic ticket, a version of the time-worn practice from conventions past that often took hours. Tuesday’s streamlined vote may last as little as half an hour, an attempt to keep viewers across the country from turning off their television sets.
Americans had never witnessed a virtual national political convention before Monday night. But the pandemic has forced the Democrats this week and the Republicans renominating Trump next week for a second White House term to abandon the hoopla-filled conventions of years past for fear of spreading the novel coronavirus.
Gone are the thousands of cheering convention delegates that the Democrats had once planned on packing into a basketball arena in the midwestern city of Milwaukee, Wisconsin.
That was replaced on Monday by short, taped endorsements of Biden by the candidates he defeated in a months-long competition to secure the party’s presidential nomination, capped with a fiery takedown of Trump’s 3 ½-year presidency from former first lady Michelle Obama, the wife of Trump’s Democratic predecessor whom he often assails, Barack Obama.
“Let me be as honest and clear as I possibly can,” she said in a prerecorded speech. “Donald Trump is the wrong president for our country. He has had more than enough time to prove that he can do the job, but he is clearly in over his head.”
“Whenever we look to this White House for some leadership or consolation or any semblance of steadiness, what we get instead is chaos, division, and a total and utter lack of empathy,” she said.
“He cannot meet this moment,” Michelle Obama concluded. “He simply cannot be who we need him to be for us.”
The Democrats’ two-hour presentation was slickly presented, but because Michelle Obama’s speech was taped days ago, she made no mention of Biden’s history-making choice of Harris as his running mate.
Trump ridiculed her assessment of his presidency, tweeting Tuesday, “Thanks for your very kind words Michelle!”
The U.S. leader added in comments from the White House, “She was over her head, and frankly, she should've made the speech live, which she didn't do, she taped it. And it was not only taped, it was taped a long time ago, because she had the wrong [number of coronavirus] deaths."
The former first lady said 150,000 had died from the pandemic but Trump did not note that the death toll has now risen to more than 170,000, the biggest national total across the globe.
The ObamaBiden Administration was the most corrupt in history, including the fact that they got caught SPYING ON MY CAMPAIGN, the biggest political scandal in the history of our Country. It’s called Treason, and more. Thanks for your very kind words Michelle!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) August 18, 2020
“Somebody please explain to @MichelleObama that Donald J. Trump would not be here, in the beautiful White House, if it weren’t for the job done by your husband, Barack Obama. Biden was merely an afterthought, a good reason for that very late & unenthusiastic endorsement,” Trump said on Twitter.
Somebody please explain to @MichelleObama that Donald J. Trump would not be here, in the beautiful White House, if it weren’t for the job done by your husband, Barack Obama. Biden was merely an afterthought, a good reason for that very late & unenthusiastic endorsement.....
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) August 18, 2020
Trump and Vice President Mike Pence are attempting to upstage Biden’s week in the spotlight, traveling to political battleground states that could play a pivotal role in the election.
Trump headed to the midwestern state of Iowa on Tuesday and later planned to visit Yuma, Arizona, near the border with Mexico to assess his construction of a border wall to thwart undocumented immigrants from crossing into the U.S. The issue was a major plank of his successful 2016 run for the presidency. On Thursday he is visiting a site near Biden’s boyhood home in Scranton, Pennsylvania.
Aside from Michelle Obama, Monday’s Democratic presentation featured several Republican figures. They included former New Jersey Governor Christine Todd Whitman and one-time presidential candidate and former Hewlett-Packard CEO Meg Whitman, making unusual appearances at the opposing party’s convention to endorse Biden as a better choice for the country than Trump.
Former Ohio Governor John Kasich, who lost to Trump for the Republican presidential nomination in 2016, said the country is “at a crossroads” and being led down “the wrong road” by a president who has pitted one person against another.
“Joe Biden is a man for our times,” Kasich said. “Times that call for all of us to take off our partisan hats and put our nation first for ourselves, and of course, for our children.”
Harris is set to speak Wednesday night. Biden will accept the Democratic presidential nomination on Thursday night with a speech from his home state of Delaware.
