By Miya Tanaka,
Former Vice President Joe Biden. (Getty/Kyodo)
WASHINGTON - The United States is gearing up for the November presidential election, with the Democratic Party kicking off its four-day national convention Monday to nominate former Vice President Joe Biden as its candidate to take on Republican President Donald Trump.
As the coronavirus pandemic grips the nation, the Democratic convention, which otherwise would have drawn tens of thousands of crowds, has gone almost entirely virtual.
The two-hour program was largely made up of speeches from big Democratic names and supporters across the nation calling for the need of a leadership change.
In U.S. presidential races, the incumbent is traditionally seen as having an advantage over the challenger. But Trump, 74, has trailed Biden, 77, in national polls, amid the country's worst public health crisis in decades, a pandemic-induced recession, and a public outcry against racial injustice.
The climax of the Democratic National Convention will be when Biden delivers a nomination acceptance speech on Thursday night from his home state of Delaware, in which he will likely stress the importance of leadership and unity to pull the country out of the health and economic crisis, according to a campaign official.
His running mate, Sen. Kamala Harris, 55, will make a speech on Wednesday night. Expectations are high among Democratic members that she will help rev up the campaign as the first black woman and first Asian American to be on a major U.S. party's presidential ticket.
The first day of the convention highlighted the frustration the Democratic heavyweights and the ordinary public are feeling under what they view as Trump's incompetence to handle the pandemic and his lack of empathy toward anti-racism protests sparked by the death of a black man in police custody in May.
"So let me be as honest and clear as I possibly can. Donald Trump is the wrong president for our country," Michelle Obama, the wife of Barack Obama for whom Biden served as vice president for eight years from 2009, said in a speech that wrapped up Monday's program.
She said Biden is a person who can lead the country properly and understand people's struggles and anguish, given that he endured the personal tragedies of losing his first wife and baby daughter in a car accident and later losing an adult son to brain cancer.
While noting that the nation is so deeply divided that her message may not reach all people, she said, "If you take one thing from my words tonight, it is this: if you think things cannot possibly get worse, trust me, they can; and they will if we don't make a change in this election. If we have any hope of ending this chaos, we have got to vote for Joe Biden like our lives depend on it."
While convention organizers seem to have worked hard to attract voters' attention by using live footage and inserting music video clips, some political professors have said it remains to be seen whether virtual conventions can galvanize voters in the way in-person rallies have done.
Apparently to divert the attention on the Democrats, Trump on Monday traveled to Wisconsin, the Midwest state where the Democratic convention is taking place, to rally support.
In his speech, Trump blasted Biden for doing "nothing" during his time as two-term vice president and a three-plus decade senator and said he allowed the United States to agree to trade deals that saw manufacturing jobs shift to other countries.
Trump also emphasized that the country is "witnessing the fastest economic recovery" from the pandemic-induced shutdown and raised optimism that the country is "very close" to developing coronavirus vaccines.
Trump will head to the western swing state of Arizona on Tuesday, again seeking to showcase himself as an active leader in contrast to Biden who has largely relied on virtual campaigning from his home in Delaware due to the virus outbreak.
The Republican Party plans to formally nominate Trump and Vice President Mike Pence, 61, for a second four-year term at the convention slated to begin next Monday in Charlotte in the southern state of North Carolina.
Trump was initially eager to hold a full-scale party convention even as the pandemic was intensifying, but gave up the idea in July. He is expected to deliver his nomination speech on Aug. 27 from the White House.
Each party's presidential nominee has been essentially decided by the outcomes of state-level primaries and caucuses that took place earlier this year. Conventions will make the choices official through voting by delegates.
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