US President wiped away his tears, before giving an emotional farewell speech that hailed Kamala Harris
Joe Biden cried as he wished his party farewell at the Democratic National Convention on Monday, weeks after he was forced to hand over the nomination to Kamala Harris.
The US president dabbed his eyes as he walked on stage and embraced his daughter, Ashley, who introduced him to cheering crowds.
“I made a lot of mistakes in my career, but I gave my best to you,” he told delegates, in a speech that lasted almost an hour.
“For 50 years, like many of you, I gave my heart and soul to our nation, and I’ve been blessed a million times in return,” he said.
“I can honestly say I’m more optimistic about the future than I was when I was elected as a 29-year-old United States senator.”
The DNC, which takes place this week in Chicago, will see Kamala Harris accept the party’s nomination after Mr Biden’s decision to quit the presidential race.
On Monday evening, his daughter appeared to tell him not to cry as she welcomed him on stage.
He stood with tears shining in his eyes as the audience cheered for him, thanking them several times.
The speech by Mr Biden aimed to define his legacy as president, as he prepares to leave the White House four years earlier than hoped.
The 81-year-old was ultimately forced off of the ballot by senior Democrats on July 21, after months of concern about his age and health.
The final straw for many of Mr Biden’s was his debate against Donald Trump in June.
Mr Biden used many of his favourite one-liners during the speech, telling delegates that America is at a “turning point…one of those rare moments in history” and that he thinks “our best days are not behind us…they’re ahead of us”.
“The middle class built America, and the unions built the middle class,” he said, reusing another of his most common lines.
He recounted the racial violence in Charlottesville that led to him running for president in 2020 and denied being angry about standing back from the race.
“With all this talk about how I’m angry, all those people said I should step down, that’s not true,” he said.
“We need to preserve our democracy in 2024.”
Mr Biden also used the speech to attack Trump, his opponent during both the presidential election he fought, on various policy areas and accuse him of endangering American democracy.
In a section on the southern US border, he said: “I never thought I’d stand before a crowd of Democrats and refer to a former president as a liar so many times
“I’m not trying to be funny. It’s sad. Trump continues to lie about the border.
“Here’s what he won’t tell you: Trump killed the strongest bipartisan border deal in the history of the United States.”
On foreign policy, Mr Biden burnished his credentials on conflicts in Ukraine and Gaza, arguing that he had prevented Vladimir Putin from taking Kyiv in three days.
But he also acknowledged that “a lot of those [pro-Palestinian] protesters on the street have a point” because “a lot of innocent people are being killed on both sides”.
The speech mentioned Ms Harris several times, but focused mainly on Mr Biden’s legacy in the White House, including his work on prescription drug prices, infrastructure and education.
He described her as the next president of the United States, telling delegates: “Selecting Kamala was the first decision I made as our nominee and the best I made in my whole career.”
He said she would be “a president respected by world leaders because she already is” and a “historic president who puts her stamp on America’s future”.
“I promise I will be the best volunteer Harris and Walz have ever seen,” he said.
Jill Biden, who had given her own speech earlier in the evening, joined her husband on stage at the end.
Speaking about Mr Biden’s decision to pass the torch to Ms Harris, the first lady said she “saw him dig deep into his soul and decide no longer to seek re-election”.
Polls show that Ms Harris has recovered from Mr Biden’s poor ratings since taking over the nomination, and is now leading Donald Trump in some swing states where he previously had a significant advantage.
National polls generally show Trump is trailing Ms Harris by between one and two percentage points.
She has launched a new economic platform, picked up support from black and Latino voters and persuaded some sceptical young voters to return to the party.
Monday’s first session of the convention also saw speeches from Hillary Clinton, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Andy Beshear, a popular Democratic governor.
Ms Clinton used her speech to attack Trump, to whom she lost the 2016 election.
“It is no surprise, is it, that he is lying about Kamala’s record, he’s mocking her name and her laugh?” she said. “Sounds familiar…but we have him on the run now.”
She compared Ms Harris’s White House run to the campaigns of Shirley Chisholm, the first Black woman to be elected to the US Congress, and Geraldine Ferraro, the first woman to be nominated for vice president.
The convention will also see speeches from Barack and Michelle Obama, Bill Clinton, and Ms Harris herself on Thursday evening.
Biden at the Democratic convention was unrecognisable from his disastrous debate
Joe Biden took the stage and held his daughter, Ashley, in a long embrace, whispered some tender words and wiped tears from his eyes. She smiled and kissed the hand of her ageing dad. The pair seemed to be at the quiet centre of a storm.
Around them more than 20,000 stood, applauded, roared and chanted, “We love Joe.” They held tall narrow signs that said, “We ♥️ Joe”. The US president walked to the lectern, smiling, pointing, looked pensive, smiled again and dabbed his nose with a handkerchief.
“I love you!” he shouted back, knowing there won’t be another night like this. “That was my daughter!” The adulatory cheering continued for all of four and a half minutes. It was the culmination of a night that for Biden must have felt either like receiving an honorary Oscar or giving the oration at his own funeral.
Among those holding a sign and chanting “Thank you, Joe” was Nancy Pelosi, the former speaker of the House of Representatives. Call her Pelosi the Pitiless. She was among the party leaders who decided to override the primary election and tell the 81-year-old president that his time is up.
Asked by the New Yorker magazine if her long friendship with Biden can survive, Pelosi replied: “I hope so. I pray so. I cry so … I lose sleep on it, yeah.”
That intervention changed everything at this Democratic national convention in Chicago. Biden had expected to give the closing speech after accepting the presidential nomination on Thursday night.
Instead he was the opening act on Monday. His old foe Donald Trump observed on social media: “They are throwing him out on the Monday Night Stage, known as Death Valley.” Worse still, Biden did not appear until 10.26pm Chicago time – which was 11.26pm in New York and Washington.
Yet again Democrats had decided that he was not fit for prime time.
All of it shows the mercilessness of politics and, as anyone with an ageing relative understands, the mercilessness of time. How quickly the golden boy becomes yesterday’s man.
There may be a kernel of Biden seething with a lifetime’s resentments. The needless plagiarism row that scuppered his first run for president in 1988. The failure to get off the ground in 2008. The way that Barack Obama gave Hillary Clinton the nod instead of him in 2016.
He overcame it all to reach the summit in 2020, proving be the man for the moment of the bleak pandemic winter. Yes, his victory said, unglamorous strivers can be president too. Biden will forever be in the school textbooks as 46.
But as a one-term president rather than two. He didn’t quite have the last laugh as Obama, Pelosi, Chuck Schumer and Hakeem Jeffries concluded that he had to hand back the crown. Somehow the old truism reared its head again: all political careers end in failure.
“I’ve got five months left in my presidency,” he told his 13th Democratic convention. “I’ve got a lot to do. I intend to get it done. It’s been the honour of my lifetime to serve as your president. I love the job, but I love my country more.”
The relief in Chicago has been palpable, as the ecstatic reaction to a surprise appearance by Kamala Harris on Monday night made clear. Democratic aides say it is the same plane with a different pilot but anyone in Biden’s shoes would surely be hurt by their eagerness to move on. The crowd was far warmer to him as an outgoing president than it would have been if he were still their last hope of defeating Trump.
The irony of it all was that, despite the late hour, Biden came out with all guns blazing. Standing at the lectern, surrounded by white stars that resembled a Star Trek teleport pad, he was a man unburdened, liberated, unrecognisable from the doddering June debate. Biden 2028!
He spoke for nearly 50 minutes, his voice strong and clear. He said pro-Palestinian protesters outside “have a point”. He articulated a vision for America in the world. And he issued a clarion call: “Democracy has prevailed. Democracy has delivered. And now democracy must be preserved.”
He also hammered Trump with relish. “You cannot say you love your country only when you win.” And: “Donald Trump promised infrastructure every week for four years and he never built a damn thing.”
Trump regularly speaks to blood, as in “bloodbath” or “poisoning the blood” of the nation. For Biden, it’s all about soul.
Recalling the white supremacist violence in Charlottesville, he said: “I could not stay on the sidelines so I ran. I had no intention of running again. I had just lost part of my soul,” a reference to the death of his son, Beau.
Wistfully reflecting on the long journey here, he told delegates: “I’ve made a lot of mistakes in my career but I gave my best to you for 50 years. Like many of you, I gave my heart and soul to our nation.”
Earlier, Jill Biden, the first lady who has been married to Biden for nearly half a century, recounted the moment that she saw him “dig deep into his soul and decide to no longer seek re-election – and endorse Kamala Harris”.
No wonder Biden has a love of Irish poetry, unrivalled in its soulfulness. Of course WB Yeats’s lines, “When you are old and grey and full of sleep / and nodding by the fire,” seems all too applicable these days. But you can also imagine him telling Jill: “One man loved the pilgrim soul in you / And loved the sorrows of your changing face.”
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