Live coverage: Joe Biden secures enough delegates to become the Democratic presidential nominee
Be sure to refresh the page often for live coverage of Day 2 of the Democratic National Convention.
John Kerry: Trump heading overseas is a ‘blooper reel’
John Kerry, the former secretary of state and 2004 Democratic nominee for president, slammed President Donald Trump for failing to confront Russia over interfering with the 2016 election or over bounties allegedly put on U.S. troops.
“When this president goes overseas, it isn’t a goodwill mission, it’s a blooper reel,” Kerry said. “Our troops can’t get out of harm’s way by hiding in the White House bunker.”
Republicans blasted Kerry for negotiating a deal aimed at hindering Iran’s nuclear program during the Obama administration and Trump withdrew from the deal. Trump has focused his foreign policy on securing the borders and renegotiating trade deals with Canada and Mexico, and with China.
Biden formally seizes Democratic nomination
Former Vice President Joe Biden on Tuesday formally secured enough Democratic delegates to become the party’s nominee to challenge President Donald Trump, winning one of the highest prizes in U.S. politics more than three decades after he first campaigned for it.
Though presidential nominating conventions haven’t been contested for decades and Biden demonstrated he had enough support for the nomination months ago, the formal roll call is nevertheless a symbolic milestone and an expression of the party’s support for their candidate.
During the state primaries and caucuses, Biden collected 2,687 delegates — more than twice the 1,073 earned by his closest rival, Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders.
Biden will formally accept the nomination Thursday.
The nomination completes the chief – and least suspenseful – objective of the convention: Choosing the candidate that will be on the November presidential ballot. But it’s also done with fanfare and celebration, a moment where party rivals who vied for the nomination united behind the nominee.
An unconventional roll call to nominate Joe Biden
Few moments have underscored the unusual nature of the Democrats’ virtual convention as the roll call Tuesday that is expected to lead to Joe Biden’s nomination.
All 57 states and territories are participating in the “Roll Call Across America,” which included video montages from each area when their turn came to announce their delegate allocations. The various party activists announcing those delegate pledges weren’t just governors, senators and congressmen but also parents, teachers, and small business owners.
That meant local delegates could make their announcements with symbols of the state’s beauty or important landmarks, such as a fire station in Connecticut, the Edmund Pettus Bridge in Selma, Alabama or the Black Lives Matter Plaza in Washington, D.C.
Marisol Garcia, a high school parent and a union organizer for the National Education Association, announced Arizona’s votes with cacti in the background.
“Arizona casts 29 votes for Bernie Sanders and 51 for our next president Joe Biden,” she said with cacti in the background.
The display marked a major departure from past years, and underscored the challenges convention planners have endured because of the coronavirus pandemic.
In normal election years, delegates gather on the floor of the hall and formally announce — state by state — how their delegation will vote. Though the results are almost always preordained, the roll call gives a member of a state’s party a chance to offer a short speech espousing the soon-to-be-nominee and promote their areas while building a sense of drama until the candidate formally crosses the threshold of delegates needed to seize the nomination.
— John Fritze and Ledyard King
Elevator operator touts Biden
National conventions usually feature politicians and party stars – but not always.
“I could tell he really saw me,” Jacquelyn Brittany, a security guard at the New York Times who operated the elevator during a Biden visit there last year, said during the convention.
“Nominating someone like that to be in the White House is a good place to start,” she said.
Jacquelyn has declined to publicize her last name. Brittany is her middle name, according to the Washington Post.
Brittany was one of several people who seconded Biden’s nomination before the formal roll call of delegates.
— John Fritze
AOC gives nominating speech for Bernie Sanders
New York Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, one of the most outspoken progressives in Congress, delivered a nomination speech for Sen. Bernie Sanders ahead of the official roll call that will nominate Joe Biden as the party’s candidate.
Sanders, Biden’s last standing opponent in the primary race, suspended his run for the Democratic nomination in April and has supported Biden. Ocasio-Cortez’s roughly 90-second speech didn’t mention Biden but established the ideals of the progressive wing of the party.
The progressive movement is “striving to recognize and repair the wounds of racial injustice, colonization, misogyny and homophobia,” Ocasio-Cortez said, adding that it “realizes the unsustainable brutality of an economy that rewards explosive inequalities of wealth for the few at the expense of long term stability for the many.”
When the length of her speech was first reported at one minute, some viewed it as a snub to progressives, noting that some Republicans were given more time to speak. Others saw her inclusion as a sign Democrats are hoping to unify progressives and centrists against Trump.
Ocasio-Cortez was a prominent backer and surrogate for Sanders’ campaign and has since said she will vote for Biden but hopes to influence his platform to the left. She co-chaired the climate task force to advise Biden on policy.
Sanders, who spoke on the first night of the Democratic Convention, has asked his supporters to back Biden despite their differences in ideology. He said during his speech Monday that the country cannot withstand another Trump term.
“The future of our democracy is at stake,” Sanders said. “The price of failure is just too great to imagine.”
Bob King, former president of the United Auto Workers, also delivered a symbolic nominating speech for Sanders on Tuesday.
–Jeanine Santucci
‘The buck never stops.’ Clinton hits Trump on COVID-19
Former President Bill Clinton sought to recapture some of his “explainer in chief” mojo during remarks Tuesday that were highly critical of President Donald Trump’s response to the coronavirus pandemic.
“Did it have to be this way? No,” Clinton said of coronavirus infection rates and deaths, after relating several of those statistics. “COVID hit us much harder than it had to.”
Clinton blamed Trump for ignoring the advice of scientists and spending too much time on social media blaming others for the crisis: “The buck never stops there,” he said.
The 42nd president has ridden peaks of popularity between troughs of disfavor since leaving the White House in 2001. His 48-minute speech at the 2012 convention was viewed by some Democrats as a more cogent argument for President Barack Obama’s second term than anything Obama had offered himself at that point in the campaign, and it earned Clinton the nickname “explainer in chief.”
But while Clinton has remained popular among the Democratic establishment, the controversies of his presidency and allegations of sexual assault and harassment have come into harsher light during a MeToo movement that has exposed similar, systemic problems in the workplace.
And so while Clinton played an extensive role on stage at the 2016 convention when former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton was the nominee, his speaking time was limited to just a few minutes Tuesday and his slot fell in the 9 p.m. hour before major networks began carrying the convention in its entirety.
Clinton has addressed every Democratic convention since 1980.
With no direct stake in this year’s election, Clinton, who turns 74 on Wednesday, has remained out of the fray of the race. But the distance also gives him an opportunity to deliver more of a direct attack on Trump without running the risk of firing up Trump’s core Republican supporters.
— John Fritze
Schumer: Trump has quit on America
Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, whose middle name Ellis stems from the iconic New York immigration facility Ellis Island, stood Tuesday in front of the Statue of Liberty as a beacon of hope for the world.
“America, Donald Trump has quit on you,” Schumer said. “We need a president with dignity, integrity the experience to lead us out of this crisis.”
His daughter’s middle name is Emma after Emma Lazarus, whose poem graces the statue.
“Beckoned by the lady behind us, we will reform our immigration system so that immigrants yearning to breathe free will at last become American citizens,” Schumer said.
Schumer said Tuesday that Democrats must elect presumptive nominee Joe Biden president and regain control of the Senate in order to pursue affordable healthcare, protect voting rights and take decisive action against climate change.
“Democrats must take back the Senate,” Schumer said. “Out of this long national nightmare, America will finally awaken to a brighter future and a new day.”
Democrats controlled half of Congress under Trump by leading the House of Representatives. But Schumer of New York could begin leading the Senate – setting the agenda for floor debate on legislation and nominations to courts and federal agencies – if Biden wins and his coattails are long enough to flip three seats from Republican to Democratic.
In campaign speeches, Trump promotes the confirmation of nearly 300 federal judges, including two members of the Supreme Court, during his first term. He warns that if he loses, Democrats would pursue gun control that he would not.
Schumer said a variety of Democrats oppose Trump, Biden’s former primary rivals in the Sens. Bernie Sanders of Vermont and Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts. Schumer said the opposition ranges to more moderate Sens. Joe Manchin of West Virginia and Mark Warner of Virginia.
“We will stay united, from Sanders and Warren to Manchin and Warner – and together, we will bring bold and dramatic change to our country,” Schumer said.
—Bart Jansen
Jimmy Carter: Biden is the right person for this moment in our nation’s history
Former President Jimmy Carter said Joe Biden had the “experience, character and decency to bring us together and restore America’s greatness” in his first appearance at a presidential nominating convention in eight years.
“We deserve a person with integrity and judgement, someone who is honest and fair, someone who is committed to what is best for the American people,” the 95-year-old said in prerecorded remarks. “Joe is that kind of leader, and he is the right person for this moment in our nation’s history.”
Carter appeared with his wife, Rosalynn Carter, who marked her 93rd birthday on Tuesday. She spoke about working with both Biden and his wife, Dr. Jill Biden on tackling the demands faced by more than 53 million unpaid caregivers who are juggling work and family responsibilities.
“Joe knows well, too well, the sorrows and struggles of being a family caregiver, from Joe’s time as a young widower thrust into single parenthood with a demanding job to he and Jill caring for their own parents and their son Beau at the end of their lives,” she said. “He knows caregiving is hard even on the good days.”
Carter, the 39th president, declined to attend the 2016 convention in Philadelphia, revealing after the election that he backed Sen. Bernie Sanders. His last appearance at a nominating convention was in 2012 when he delivered prime time remarks that were broadcast on the convention’s second night. The one-term Democratic president has mostly stayed out of domestic politics and focused much of his post-presidency on humanitarian work, which landed him a Nobel Peace Prize since he left office in 1981.
Carter has been sheltering at his home in Plains, Georgia, amid the ongoing pandemic, and was notably absent from Congressman John Lewis’ funeral in Atlanta last month. The Georgia Democrat instead sent a letter of condolences that was read aloud at the funeral.
The former president recalled Biden as his “first and most effective supporter in the Senate” in his bid for the White House in 1976.
“For decades, he has been my loyal and dedicated friend,” Carter said. “He understands that honesty and dignity are essential traits that determine not only our vision but our actions. More than ever, that’s what we need.”
— Courtney Subramanian
Yates slams Trump for treating U.S. ‘like his family business’
Former Acting Attorney General Sally Yates accused President Donald Trump of trampling on constitutional norms in one of the first addresses of the second night of the Democratic convention on Tuesday.
“From the moment President Trump took office, he’s used his position to benefit himself rather than our country,” Yates asserted. “Put simply, he treats our country like it’s his family business.”
Yates, who gained prominence among Democrats after defying Trump at the Justice Department, was considered a potential running mate for Biden and some have speculated she remains in the running to serve as Attorney General should he win.
Yates served as deputy attorney general under former President Barack Obama and became acting attorney general in the chaotic early days of the Trump administration. Her profile was elevated dramatically when she instructed the department’s attorneys not to defend the administration’s hastily crafted travel ban on majority-Muslim nations, calling it unlawful.
On Tuesday, Yates added the word “shameless” to describe the ban.
Trump immediately fired Yates.
Her defiance was the first high profile case of a Justice Department staff member — including some career officials and other political appointments made by Trump – questioning the president’s authority to carry out his early agenda. Trump loyalists have used the episodes to dismiss any pushback with the administration as evidence of a “deep state” conspiracy.
Yates later testified that she warned the White House early in Trump’s administration that their incoming national security adviser, Michael Flynn, had misled senior officials about his communications with the Russian ambassador to the United States. Flynn pleaded guilty in 2017 to lying to the FBI about his communications with the ambassador but later reversed course, arguing investigators entrapped him.
Trump has argued that Flynn was “treated him very unfairly” and hasn’t ruled out a pardon for his former adviser.
— John Fritze
Convention gets started by featuring diverse voices attacking Trump
Stacey Abrams had hoped for a larger role at the Democratic National Convention, namely a spot on the presidential ticket that Joe Biden gave to California Sen. Kamala Harris.
But the former Georgia gubernatorial candidate still got a prime-time slot Tuesday, one of 17 “rising stars” the party tapped to give a keynote address leading up to the roll call vote that will officially elevate Biden as the party’s presidential nominee.
The choice is clear between Biden and Trump is clear, she said: “A leader who cares about our families or a president who only cares about himself.”
Abrams, who was among those Biden was said to consider for his running mate at one point, narrowly lost the 2018 race for governor. She now chairs Fair Fight Action, an organization aimed at mobilizing Black voters and eliminating obstacles to voter access nationwide.
The virtual nature of the convention has also changed the format a bit. Instead of one up-and-rising Democrat to deliver the keynote speech, the party chose to showcase 17, all of whom heralded Biden’s positions to expand health care, fight climate change and grow the economy.
The other 16 keynote speakers kicking off the second day of the convention included federal and state officeholders from across the country including key battleground states such as Florida (State Agriculture Commissioner Nikki Fried), Michigan (State Rep. Mari Manoogian), and Pennsylvania (Congressmen Brendan Boyle and Conor Lamb, and State Rep. Malcolm Kenyatta).
Also on the roster were: Tennessee State Sen. Raumesh Akbari, Texas Congressman Colin Allred, Nevada State Sen. Yvanna Cancela, Former Ohio State Rep. Kathleen Clyde, Long Beach, California, Mayor Robert Garcia, South Carolina State Sen. Marlon Kimpson, Texas State Rep. Victoria Neave, Navajo Nation President Jonathan Nez, Georgia State Rep. Sam Park, Georgia, New Hampshire State Rep. Denny Ruprecht, and Birmingham, Alabama, Mayor Randall Woodfin.
“There’s a lot riding on this election,” Nez said in a video message that includes separately recorded sound bites from his fellow keynoters.
“When we’re facing the biggest economic and health crisis in generations because our president didn’t and still doesn’t have a plan,” Garcia added.
Most Americans might not be familiar with those names but they well could be over the next decade as they climb the party ranks, said Lara Brown, director of the Graduate School of Political Management (GSPM) at George Washington University.
“If you are interested in creating essentially a national profile, you need to become known among the activists within your party,” she said. “Even if they don’t generate a tremendous amount of celebrity or name recognition, what it does do is put them on the radar screen of democratic party activists who will start supporting them in their current race, in the next race or on policy issues they’d like to advance … this is an opportunity for more than 15 minutes of fame.”
— Ledyard King
Trump blasts Michelle Obama for taped speech, DNC’s ‘very bad’ ratings
President Donald Trump spent much of Tuesday attacking former first lady Michelle Obama for delivering prerecorded remarks to the Democratic National Convention that included a searing rebuke of his administration.
“Unlike Michelle Obama, I’m doing it live,” Trump said of his plans for his Republican nomination acceptance speech after a briefing on border wall construction in Yuma, Arizona. “Live, by the way, is always much more exciting than tape, especially once you made the tape long before the event.”
Trump, who flew from Washington to Iowa to Arizona as part of a jam-packed schedule of counter-programming during the DNC, criticized the former first lady for citing an outdated COVID-19 death toll and failing to mention Sen. Kamala Harris as Biden’s historic pick as his running mate during taped remarks on the opening night of the convention.
During her speech, Obama said “more than 150,000” Americans had died from the coronavirus, a number that has since topped 170,000.
Trump dismissed her speech as “divisive” and “devoid of facts.”
“She didn’t even have the accurate facts and then they say, ‘what a wonderful job.’ What was wonderful about it?” Trump asked.
Obama delivered a blistering attack on Trump, calling him “the wrong president for our country” who is “clearly in over his head.” While urging Americans to vote for Biden, Obama said Trump’s failure to manage the COVID-19 pandemic and his response to the Black Lives Matter protests underscored his inability to lead the country through crisis.
“You simply cannot fake your way through this job,” she said.
The speech appeared to rankle Trump, who tweeted about it multiple times earlier on Tuesday. He later took aim at the Obama administration, slamming his predecessor for his handling of the swine flu outbreak and insisting he “would not be here, in the beautiful White House, if it weren’t for the job done by your husband, Barack Obama.”
Trump also blasted the DNC for “very bad” ratings after it was revealed that the first night of the convention drew about 25% fewer views across six networks compared to 2016, according to preliminary data from Nielsen Media Research. The convention averaged about 19 million viewers across six networks during the 10 p.m. hour when most networks carried the event. The figures do not include viewers on other networks, streaming services, or social media platforms.
“Well their ratings were very bad,” Trump told reporters. “I thought it was not the best television I’ve ever watched. It was brutal actually.”
— Courtney Subramanian
Guard who met Biden in elevator to nominate him
A security guard who gushed over meeting Joe Biden in an elevator during his visit with The New York Times editorial board will be the first person to put his name into nomination for president at the Democratic National Convention.
Jacquelyn Brittany is one of three people putting Biden’s name into nomination on Tuesday night. She’ll be joined by Sen. Chris Coons and Rep. Lisa Blunt Rochester, both from Delaware.
The 31-year-old, who has declined to share her last name publicly, was filmed telling the former vice president “I love you” as she escorted him to the newspaper’s editorial board meeting. While Biden lost the paper’s endorsement, his team elevated the clip of Brittany as evidence that Biden appeals to average working Americans rather than elites.
Biden deputy campaign manager Kate Bedingfield tweeted that Jacquelyn’s was “the most powerful endorsement of the 2020 cycle.”
– Associated Press
Cindy McCain talks about John McCain’s friendship with Joe Biden
In a pre-recorded video, Cindy McCain highlights the late Sen. John McCain’s close friendship with presumptive Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden in another high-profile instance of a Republican lending her voice to the Democratic National Convention.
In the video, first reported on by the Associated Press, McCain narrates key moments of the Biden-McCain friendship, with photos and video clips of the two men. A snippet of the video on YouTube does not contain an explicit endorsement of Biden over Republican President Donald Trump.
In the video, Cindy McCain talks about the two families that grew close, as her husband and Biden worked together and traveled thousands of miles together.
In the teaser on YouTube, McCain says the two men grew close when Biden, a senator from Delaware at the time, met John McCain when McCain was assigned as a Navy aide for him on an overseas trip.
— Yvonne Sanchez, Arizona Republic
Trump will accept nomination at the White House
President Donald Trump said Tuesday he will formally accept his party’s nomination in a speech delivered at the White House, ending weeks of speculation about what will be one of the most closely watched events of the presidential election.
Trump, speaking in Yuma, Arizona, said he would deliver the remarks from the South Lawn.
– John Fritze
Jill Biden will take from her time as a teacher
Jill Biden is expected to speak about being a teacher during the pandemic from the Delaware high school classroom where she taught while Joe Biden was a senator.
“You can hear the anxiety that echoes down empty hallways,” she said in prepared remarks. “There’s no scent of new notebooks or freshly waxed floors. The rooms are dark and the bright young faces that should fill them are confined to boxes on a computer screen.”
Clinton expected to go after Trump
Clinton is expected to criticize Trump over the high unemployment rate at a time when he should be leading the world.
“At a time like this, the Oval Office should be a command center,” Clinton said in prepared remarks. “Instead, it’s a storm center. There’s only chaos. Just one thing never changes—his determination to deny responsibility and shift the blame. The buck never stops there.”
A theme of leadership
The theme of the night is: “Leadership Matters,” John Kerry, the 2004 Democratic nominee and former secretary of state, is among the speakers. Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer of New York, a vocal critic of Trump, will also be speaking.
Kerry is expected to criticize Trump for pretending that Russia didn’t try to influence the 2016 election and for failing to act against bounties that Russia allegedly put on U.S. troops.
“So he won’t defend our country,” Kerry said in a prepared remarks. “He doesn’t know how to defend our troops. The only person he’s interested in defending is himself.”
