Joe Biden took the stage and held his daughter Ashley for a long time, whispering tender words and wiping tears from his eyes. She smiled and kissed her aging father’s hand. The couple seemed to be in the quiet middle of a storm.
More than 20,000 people stood around them, applauding, roaring and chanting, “We love Joe.” They held tall, narrow signs that read, “We ♥️ Joe.” The American president walked to the podium, smiling, pointing, looking thoughtful, smiling again and dabbing his nose with a tissue.
“I love you!” he shouted back, knowing there would never be another night like it. “That was my daughter!” The effusive cheer lasted a full four and a half minutes. It was the highlight of an evening that, for Biden, must have felt like receiving an honorary Oscar or giving the commencement speech 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 Ruthless. She was one of the party leaders who decided to ignore the primaries and tell the 81-year-old president that his time was up.
Asked by the New Yorker magazine whether her long friendship with Biden can endure, Pelosi replied: “I hope so. I pray so. I cry so… I lose sleep over it, yes.”
That intervention changed everything at this Democratic national convention in Chicago. Biden had been expected to deliver the closing speech after accepting the presidential nomination on Thursday night.
Instead, he was the opening act on Monday. His old foe Donald Trump noted on social media: “They’re kicking him out on the Monday Night Stage known as Death Valley.” Worse, Biden didn’t show up until 10:26 p.m. Chicago time – which was 11:26 p.m. in New York and Washington.
Once again, Democrats decided he was not fit for public broadcasting.
It all shows the ruthlessness of politics and, as anyone with an aging relative understands, the ruthlessness of time. How quickly the golden boy becomes a man of yesterday.
There may be a core of Biden seething with a lifetime of resentment. The unnecessary plagiarism row that doomed his first run for president in 1988. The failure to get off the ground in 2008. The way Barack Obama favored Hillary Clinton over him in 2016.
He overcame everything to reach the top in 2020, proving himself the man for the moment of the bleak pandemic winter. Yes, his victory said that low-profile achievers can be president too. Biden will forever be in the textbooks as 46.
But as a one-term president instead of a two-term president, he didn’t really have the final say when Obama, Pelosi, Chuck Schumer and Hakeem Jeffries concluded that he should give back the crown. Somehow, the old truism reared its head again: All political careers end in failure.
“I have five months left in my presidency,” he told his 13th Democratic convention. “I have a lot to do. I intend to get it done. It has been the honor of my life to be your president. I love my job, but I love my country even more.”
The relief in Chicago was palpable, as the ecstatic reaction to a surprise appearance by Kamala Harris on Monday night made clear. Democratic operatives say it’s the same plane with a different pilot, but anyone in Biden’s shoes would surely have been hurt by their eagerness to move on. The crowd was far warmer to him as the outgoing president than it would have been if he were still their last hope to defeat Trump.
The irony of it all was that, despite the late hour, Biden came out guns blazing. Standing at the podium, surrounded by white stars resembling a Star Trek teleportation platform, he was a man unburdened, liberated, unrecognizable from the plodding debate of June. Biden 2028!
He spoke for nearly 50 minutes, his voice strong and clear. He said that pro-Palestinian protesters outside “have a point.” He articulated a vision for America in the world. And he issued a clear call: “Democracy has prevailed. Democracy has delivered. And now democracy must be preserved.”
He also hammered Trump with relish. “You can’t say you love your country unless you win.” And: “Donald Trump promised infrastructure week every week for four years, but he’s never built anything.”
Trump frequently speaks of blood, as in “massacre” or “poisoning the blood” of the nation. For Biden, it’s all about the soul.
Recalling the white supremacist violence in Charlottesville, he said, “I couldn’t stand by, so I ran. I had no intention of running again. I had just lost a part of my soul,” a reference to the death of his son Beau.
Reflecting wistfully on the long journey here, he told delegates: “I have made many mistakes in my career, but I have done my best for you for 50 years. Like many of you, I have given my heart and soul to our nation.”
Earlier, Jill Biden, the first lady who has been married to Biden for nearly half a century, spoke about the moment she saw him “dig deep into his soul and decide not to run for re-election — and to support Kamala Harris.”
No wonder Biden has a love of Irish poetry that is unmatched in its soulfulness. Sure, WB Yeats’s lines, “When you are old and grey and full of sleep/ and nodding by the fire,” seem all too apt 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.”
Democratic convention highlights:
