On night two of the Democratic National Convention, Jill Biden offered a loving and compelling portrait of her husband, emphasizing his strength of character and ability to move the country forward. She didn’t mention Donald Trump by name, but didn’t need to. Her appeal for America to be guided by love and respect for others stood in contrast to Trump’s values—which political leaders and former government officials laid into during the broadcast’s national security portion.
Characterizing her husband as someone defined by decency and stability and, perhaps most fundamentally, hope, Jill Biden asked: “How do you make a broken family whole? The same way you make a nation whole. With love and understanding—and with small acts of kindness. With bravery. With unwavering faith.” She spoke from a humble classroom inside Brandywine High, the Delaware school where she used to teach. “We just need leadership worthy of our nation. Worthy of you. Honest leadership to bring us back together—to recover from this pandemic and prepare for whatever else is next. Leadership to reimagine what our nation will be.”
Earlier, cameras zoomed in on Joe Biden and his family in the school library, where they celebrated his formal designation as the party’s nominee following a virtual roll call that took viewers through all 50 states, U.S. territories, and the District of Columbia. “It means the world to me and my family,” he said. “I’ll see you on Thursday.”
“Leadership Matters” was the theme of the night: whereas Monday’s broadcast focused on what regular Americans had to say, Tuesday launched almost immediately into what Democratic leaders had to say—particularly the old guard, like former Presidents Jimmy Carter and Bill Clinton and former Secretary of State and 2004 presidential nominee John Kerry. Former Acting Attorney General Sally Yates, who was fired by Trump for opposing his Muslim travel ban, denounced the president’s incessant attacks on American institutions like the press and intelligence agencies. “He treats our country like it’s his family business—this time bankrupting our nation’s moral authority, at home and abroad. But our country doesn’t belong to him. It belongs to all of us,” she said, adding: “We need a president who respects our laws.”
Clinton offered a succinct, sharp rebuke of Trump and a policy-oriented endorsement of Biden. “If you want a president who defines the job as spending hours a day watching TV and zapping people on social media, he’s your man. Denying, distracting, and demeaning works great if you’re trying to entertain and inflame. But in a real crisis, it collapses like a house of cards,” he said. “You know what Donald Trump will do with four more years: blame, bully, and belittle. And you know what Joe Biden will do: build back better.”
New York Representative Alexandra Ocasio-Cortez did not mention Biden in the short time she appeared during the broadcast to nominate Bernie Sanders—a formality, as he received the second-most delegates. “Watching Bernie get nominated by AOC is like seeing a parallel world,” former 2020 candidate Andrew Yang tweeted. On the social media platform, many expressed confusion about her endorsement of Sanders, with some even mistaking her as slighting Biden. “If you were confused, no worries!” Ocasio-Cortez tweeted, clarifying that “convention rules require roll call & nominations for every candidate that passes the delegate threshold” and that she was asked to second the nomination for the Vermont senator. “I extend my deepest congratulations to @JoeBiden – let’s go win in November,” she added.
The first to nominate Biden at the convention was Jacquelyn Brittany, the 31-year-old New York Times security guard who blurted out “I love you” to the former vice president in the elevator as he went to visit the paper’s editorial board—a touching moment that went viral and led the Biden campaign to select her to kick off the virtual roll call vote. “In the short time I spent with Joe Biden, I could tell he really saw me, that he actually cared, that my life meant something to him,” she said. “And I knew even when he went into his important meeting, he’d take my story in there with him. That’s because Joe Biden has room in his heart for more than just himself.”