(Bloomberg) -- Joe Biden rebuked President Donald Trump in a prime-time address Thursday accepting the Democratic nomination, calling his opponent a national embarrassment who left Americans vulnerable to the coronavirus pandemic and economic hardship.
“Our current president has failed in his most basic duty to the nation. He has failed to protect us. He has failed to protect America,” Biden said after squarely blaming Trump for the ongoing U.S. coronavirus outbreak, the worst in the world.
“My fellow Americans, that is unforgivable,” he said. “As president, I will make you a promise: I will protect America.”
The former vice president's roughly 25-minute address capped the final night of the Democratic National Convention, made virtual because of the pandemic. Biden spoke to a largely empty room at the Chase Center in Wilmington, Delaware, with supporters parked outside watching on screens as if at a drive-in movie theater. Fireworks ended the night.
Biden's speech -- the most important of his nearly half-century in politics -- set the tone for a bruising general election battle. Without ever using Trump's name, the former vice president said the incumbent had “cloaked America in darkness for far too long.”
“I will be an ally of the light, not the darkness,” he said.
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He laid out a broad agenda for his presidency, including a plan to build roads, bridges, broadband and other infrastructure to spur economic growth. He said he would change a tax code that “rewards wealth more than it rewards work” and vowed to protect Social Security, which he suggested Trump wouldn't do. Biden also said he would address climate change as an opportunity for the U.S. to lead the world in clean energy.
He promised to support working-class Americans and unions, improve child care and health care, reduce the burden of student debt and pay more for essential work that has been at the forefront of the pandemic. He gave few details about how he would fund such efforts except to say that it was time for wealthy Americans and large corporations to pay their “fair share” in taxes.
Trump, by contrast, has not said what he would do in a second term, beyond further cutting taxes despite mounting U.S. deficits and debt.
Democrats spent the four nights of their convention mixing blunt criticism of Trump as an incompetent and corrupt threat to democracy with promises that Biden, 77, has the decency and experience to tackle difficult problems like the coronavirus. They've also sought to portray the party's moderate and liberal wings as largely unified, burying progressive concerns that Biden is too much of an establishment centrist.
At a small rally earlier in the day near Biden's hometown of Scranton, Pennsylvania, Trump told his supporters that Biden would be their “worst nightmare.”
More convention coverage Biden promised that while he is running as a Democrat, he would be “an American president.” He forcefully blamed Trump for the U.S. coronavirus outbreak and economic collapse that followed, questioning why other countries including Canada and Japan have largely brought the pandemic under control.
The U.S. has suffered more than 5.7 million cases of Covid-19 and more than 177,000 deaths, more than any other country, and is still adding tens of thousands of new cases every day. Trump has sought to blame China for the U.S. outbreak and has recently taken a number of punitive actions against Beijing while trying to preserve his so-called “phase-one” trade deal with the world's second-largest economy.
If the president is re-elected, Biden warned, the U.S. outbreak and economic suffering would persist.
“Cases and deaths will remain far too high,” he said. “More mom-and-pop businesses will close their doors, and this time for good.”
Trump, he said, “keeps telling us, the virus is going to disappear. I have news for him: no miracle is coming. Our economy is in tatters. And after all this time, the president still does not have a plan.”
Biden made clear that combating the virus would be his top priority and promised to implement his own coronavirus plan on “day one” of his presidency. It would include a national mask mandate, deploying “rapid” tests to contain the outbreak, restocking medical supplies and ensuring that schools can safely open to students, he said.
“In short, I will do what we should have done from the very beginning,” he said.
The convention's fourth night was opened by Andrew Yang, the entrepreneur who challenged Biden for the Democratic nomination. He urged Americans who voted for Trump out of disgust for Washington or those “who didn't vote at all” in 2016 to consider the former vice president.
“We are in a deep dark hole, and we need leaders who will help us dig out,” he said. Biden and his vice presidential nominee, Kamala Harris, are “real people,” Yang said. “They understand the problems we face.”
Speaker after speaker at the convention, including former President Barack Obama, encouraged Americans to vote early and have a plan to cast their ballot, in anticipation of potential mail delays and long, socially distanced lines at physical polling stations. Harris, a California senator, warned viewers on Wednesday that Republicans will seek to suppress the vote in the belief that high turnout would benefit Biden.
A record number of Americans are expected to cast mail-in ballots this year because of the pandemic. Democrats have accused Trump of trying to sabotage the U.S. Postal Service to help his re-election bid, while the president has already begun to try to sow public doubt about any outcome that results in a Biden victory.
Hosted by actress Julia Louis-Dreyfus, Thursday night's theme was “America's Promise,” touting Biden's decades of public service and featuring people who can “speak to Joe Biden's leadership and character,” according to the party. Louis-Dreyfus repeatedly mocked Trump in jokes made between speakers.
Speakers included other former Biden competitors for the party's nomination: Senator Cory Booker of New Jersey; former South Bend, Indiana, Mayor Pete Buttigieg; and former New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg.
Bloomberg is the founder and majority owner of Bloomberg LP, the parent company of Bloomberg News.
Bloomberg said that Trump's leadership had been catastrophic for the country, blaming him for hundreds of thousands of Americans sickened or killed by coronavirus.
“I'm not asking you to vote against Donald Trump because he's a bad guy,” he said. “I'm urging you to vote against him because he's done a bad job.”
Senator Tammy Baldwin of Wisconsin, and Senator Tammy Duckworth of Illinois, both considered as possible Biden running mates, also spoke, as did Senator Chris Coons of Biden's home state of Delaware.
Biden was introduced by his children and grandchildren, including his son, Hunter Biden, who was targeted by Trump during the impeachment for his work for a Ukrainian gas company while Biden was vice president. His presence signaled that Biden is unconcerned with Trump's reaction to his appearance.
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