Former South Bend Mayor Pete Buttigieg announced Indiana’s delegate vote. Sen. Amy Klobuchar touted Biden’s ability to build bridges in Minnesota’s roll call. Rep. Tim Ryan announced the delegates from Ohio, while Sanders and his wife, Jane, were on camera from Vermont.
But unlike 2016, Sanders didn’t make the official motion to make Biden the Democratic nominee in the name of party unity.
In 2016, then-Rep. Tulsi Gabbard, D-Hawaii, nominated Sanders at the convention in Philadelphia, marveling how a “somewhat frumpy and maybe even sometimes grumpy 70-year-old guy could become the voice for millions.” But after the states’ roll call vote, Sanders, surrounded by delegates from Vermont, rose to suspend the procedural rules and nominate Hillary Clinton.
Eight years earlier, it was Clinton who made a similar gesture from the convention floor to officially nominate Barack Obama by acclamation to be the 2008 presidential candidate after her tough loss to the eventual two-term president.
But like everything else, this convention is different.
“These are not conventional times,” Milwaukee Mayor Tom Barrett said in kicking off Day Two of the convention, which would have brought huge crowds to his city if not for the COVID-19 crisis. “And as a result, as we all know, this is not a conventional convention.”
In a series of speeches throughout the night, speakers sought to paint Trump as an inept leader and Biden as the steady and decent hand America needs.
Stacey Abrams, the former Georgia gubernatorial candidate, said Biden will restore the “moral compass” and ripped Trump as “a president of cowardice.”
Sen. Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., hit Trump for his coronavirus response and for the treatment of protesters. “America, Donald Trump has quit on you,” Schumer said before the Statue of Liberty.
Jimmy Carter and wife Rosalynn addressed the convention in a voice message praising Biden’s character and dignity. “He the right person for this moment,” Carter said.
Former President Bill Clinton blasted Trump for failing to take responsibility for the coronavirus response.
“Just one thing never changes—his determination to deny responsibility and shift the blame,” Clinton said. “The buck never stops there.”
The Trump campaign and Republican National Committee, ahead of their convention next week, hit right back at the night’s speakers.
“Pres. Trump has spent his presidency righting the wrongs of Bill Clinton & Joe Biden’s record of failed policies,” the RNC tweeted.
Kayleigh McEnany, White House press secretary, mocked the convention format as a metaphor, ripping “transitionless doldrums of unenthusiastic Biden surrogates, very emblematic of his base.”
Parents were also featured Tuesday night to draw attention to some of Biden’s policy priorities. Gun safety activist Fred Guttenberg, whose daughter Jaime was killed in the 2018 Parkland high school massacre, announced the Florida delegate votes.
Gold star father Khizr Khan talked of the 2017 racial violence in Charlottesville in announcing the Virginia delegate votes. And in Wyoming, Judy and Dennis Shepard touted Biden’s leadership to stop hate crimes against LGBTQ Americans in the wake of their son Matthew’s 1998 murder.
