Joe Biden used his nomination acceptance speech to appeal to Republican-leaning voters who are weary of the Trump administration, says David Frum, former speechwriter to U.S. President George W. Bush.
“Those voters are not looking for big ideological change, they just want a president who doesn’t cause them embarrassment all the time,” said Frum, senior editor at The Atlantic.
“And Joe Biden was reaching out to them, because they are going to be so important,” he told The Current’s guest host Duncan McCue.
Frum pointed to the 2018 midterm elections, when Democrats took control of the House of Representatives “by flipping dozens of seats in normally Republican areas,” he said.
“They did it by persuading a lot of Republican leaners, especially women, that the president was a menace to them,” he said.
Frum said Biden’s speech Thursday night was aimed at telling those voters that “you can trust me to run the country in a way that makes you proud.”
Biden formally accepted the Democratic nomination Thursday night, and pledged to “overcome this season of darkness in America.”
- Biden vows to overcome ‘season of darkness’ as he accepts the Democratic presidential nomination
The three-day Democratic Convention focused on mounting crises in the U.S., with many speakers criticizing Republican incumbent Donald Trump for his handling of the pandemic, which has left millions out of work and more than 170,000 dead.
“History’s delivered us to one of the most difficult moments America has ever faced,” Biden said Thursday night, citing “a perfect storm” of four crises facing America.
“The worst pandemic in over a hundred years, the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression, the most compelling call for racial justice since the ’60s, and the undeniable realities and accelerating threats of climate change,” he said.
“The question for us is simple. Are we ready?”
We can all survive in the big tent, including a lot of room for the elephants– Rev. Leah Daughtry
Late Thursday night, Trump tweeted criticism that Biden’s speech was not backed up by action in his long political career, and that the speech was “just words.”
Rev. Leah Daughtry, former chair of the Democratic National Committee, said “the tone of divisiveness [and] the tone of separation” are part of the current administration’s challenges.
“What the Democrats were able to do this week is sort of draw the tent even bigger, and say we’re big enough to include a diversity of ideas, a diversity of people, a diversity of states,” said Daughtry, who served as CEO of the Democratic National Committee in 2008 and 2016 and as chief of staff to Howard Dean.
“I think they did a great job of showing that we can all survive in the big tent, including a lot of room for the elephants.”
A ‘very unruly coalition’
Frum said Biden has to manage “a very large and very unruly coalition,” with support that ranges “from Bernie Sanders to former Republican national security officials.”
“The specifics are dangerous to a coalition like that, but a mood of empathy and decency and normality and an indication of not what he’s willing to do, but which problems he’ll address — that’s how you hold this big, messy coalition together,” he said.
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Biden’s policy platform is slightly to the left of Barack Obama’s on health care, climate change and infrastructure spending, but is seen by some progressive Democrats as not bold enough.
Daughtry said that wide support will be necessary in an election where Democrats need to motivate voters into an “Obama+++ turnout” to win.
She said bringing Kamala Harris on to the ticket as vice-presidential nominee — something she personally urged Biden to do — was another important factor.
“Given what the Democrats must do this November, it was important that the key base of the Democratic party be energized in a way that they have not been before,” she said.
“So we pressed that case with the vice-president and he took our advice.”
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John Podesta, campaign manager for Hillary Clinton’s 2016 presidential campaign, said the three days of speeches showed “a laser-like focus” on telling voters the Democrats have “a vision to put people back to work, to build back better, to take care of everyone in this country.”
“But in the end of the day, it’s the next couple of months that are going to really make the difference in terms of being able to drive that message home.”
FROM: CBC