Biden takes aim at Trump, vows to salvage U.S. from “darkness”

Former U.S. Vice President Joe Biden on Thursday formally accepted the Democratic presidential nomination, portraying the nation as being in a “season of darkness,” while offering his remedies to rebuild it.

Though his actual name was never spoken, attacks on “this president,” “the current president,” or “the current occupant of the office” were omnipresent throughout Biden’s 25-minute acceptance speech.

Almost from the beginning, Biden directly took aim at his rival in the upcoming election, saying “the current president has cloaked America in darkness for much too long. Too much anger. Too much fear. Too much division.”

“If you entrust me with the presidency, I will draw on the best of us, not the worst. I will be an ally of the light, not of the darkness,” Biden said from the Chase Center in his hometown of Wilmington, Delaware, pledging that while he is a Democratic candidate, he will be an American president, and he will work as hard for those who don’t support him as he will for those who do.

Biden, 77, who is running for the White House for the third time in his political career that has lasted for almost a half century, highlighted “four historic crises” facing the United States: the coronavirus pandemic that has infected over 5.5 million people and claimed over 170,000 lives in the country, the national economy that is reeling from the worst recession since the Great Depression, sweeping protests across the nation for racial justice following the death of African American man George Floyd by police brutality, and the rapidly worsening climate change.

“Now history has delivered us to one of the most difficult moments America has ever faced. Four historic crises. All at the same time. A perfect storm,” Biden said, stressing that the upcoming election “is more consequential,” as “America is at an inflection point, a time of real peril, but of extraordinary possibilities.”

Biden spent a big chunk of time during his speech detailing what he would do to tackle the coronavirus from day one as president, including making COVID-19 testing widely available with immediate results, giving schools necessary resources for them to safely reopen, stocking the country with adequate U.S.-made medical supplies and personal protective equipment, as well as requiring a national mandate on mask-wearing.

“The tragedy of where we are today is it didn’t have to be this bad,” Biden said, contrasting his country’s world-leading cases and deaths with the lower numbers in European and Asian countries.

“And after all this time, the president still does not have a plan,” Biden said of Trump.

To sum up his response to the pandemic, Biden said he “will do what we should have done from the very beginning,” adding that “our current president has failed in his most basic duty to this nation. He failed to protect us. He failed to protect America. And, my fellow Americans, that is unforgivable.”

Turning to other issues, Biden promised an economic plan that will rebuild the nation, a healthcare system expanded on the basis of the Obama-era Affordable Care Act that Trump vowed to undo, and an education system that better trains students for jobs and makes tuition payments and debt no longer burdens for young people.

Biden also talked about bridging the income gap, turning the challenges posed by climate change into job-creating opportunities, reversing Trump’s tax cuts by taxing the wealthiest and the biggest corporations, and protecting seniors’ social security, which he said Trump had threatened to disrupt by cutting the tax that pays for almost half of it.