JOE Biden was officially nominated as the Democratic candidate to take on U.S. President Donald Trump in November in the race for the White House, on the second day of the party’s national convention Tuesday. For Biden, a former senator and vice president, the nod comes more than three decades after he first tried to become president. He will share the ticket with Kamala Harris, 55, a senator from California and the first Black woman to run for vice president. “Thank you very very much. From the bottom of my heart. Thank you all, it means the world to me and my family,” the 77-year-old said over video-link upon the completion of the counting of delegates. “It is the honor of my life to accept the Democratic Party’s nomination for President of the United States of America,” Biden said in a tweet. More Republicans have jumped party lines to get behind Biden. Former Secretary of State Colin Powell, who served under Republican President George W Bush, endorsed Biden, while Cindy McCain, the wife of the late Republican lawmaker John McCain narrated a video praising Biden’s record and personal character. As a formality, each state and U.S. territory cast votes for Biden, often seen as a moderate. His main Democratic rival, Senator Bernie Sanders, a left-wing stalwart, had endorsed the former vice president in a lengthy speech the night before, indicating the party was united facing Trump, in contrast to the sense of divisiveness in 2016. The second night of the convention focused more on Biden as a person, including a segment about his relationship with his wife Jill. The couple married more than 40 years ago, after Biden’s first wife and daughter were killed in a car crash. Jill Biden, who is now a key adviser to her husband but has a doctorate in education, gave the night’s keynote speech from a school, as the country struggles to figure out how to get children back to classrooms amid the coronavirus pandemic. She said in her speech that “love and understanding” were the keys to healing a nation struggling with the virus and severe social fault lines. The attacks on Trump, meanwhile, continued unabated. A slew of former national security officials and former Secretary of State John Kerry all signalled they viewed the incumbent as a threat to the nation, or at least someone unable or unwilling to defend the country. Former Democratic President Bill Clinton said Biden is “go-to-work president, a down-to-earth, get-the-job-done guy” as he blasted Trump for watching cable news and bullying his opponents on Twitter. “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,” Clinton said of the White House incumbent. Biden was officially nominated by a security guard who he met and chatted with earlier this year in an elevator, a move designed to present him as a man-of-the-people. Former President Barack Obama, the country’s first black president, congratulated Biden on being formally nominated as the Democratic Party’s 2020 presidential nominee. “Congrats, Joe. I’m proud of you,” Obama tweeted Tuesday night. Biden served as Obama’s vice president for eight years. Obama has praised Biden as a close partner during his time in the White House and officially endorsed him in April. Polling shows Biden ahead of Trump nationally, amid anger over the president’s handling of the pandemic, though the main races to watch will be in swing states. During the Democratic primary, Biden’s opponents attacked him for being heavy on charm but light on policy. Now as the party’s candidate, he has put together a detailed platform that contains some of the most radical proposals by a Democratic nominee in recent history. One area where Biden shows his intentions most clearly is on tax. He has promised to undo Trump’s tax cuts, which gave relief to richer households and businesses by moving the top rate of income tax back up from 37 percent to 39.6 percent. He would also raise corporate tax from 21 percent to 28 percent — though not all the way to 35 percent, where it was before Trump’s cuts. And he has proposed setting long-term capital gains tax for those earning more than US$1 million at the same level as income tax. That would mean a jump for top earners from 20 percent to 39.6 percent. Biden has talked about using the extra income from these taxes on infrastructure, and green infrastructure in particular. If he becomes president, Biden’s first challenge will be tackling the coronavirus pandemic, which public health experts warn could have particularly dire consequences this winter as it overlaps with flu season. Biden has promised to make tests free and widely available, as well as force insurers to cover all costs of preventing and treating COVID-19. He also pledged to enact emergency paid leave for workers affected by the virus, as the first step towards introducing paid leave for all workers. But the biggest difference with Trump’s approach to coronavirus is likely to be on messaging — Biden has promised to put public health officials at the forefront of crafting the policy response. This contrasts with the current president, who has occasionally attacked scientists such as Anthony Fauci, the head of the National Institute for Allergy and Infectious Diseases. In the longer term, Biden has vowed to enact health care reforms that would ensure more people get insurance coverage under the Obama-era Affordable Care Act, which the Trump administration has scaled back. Biden is in a precarious position on trade. On the one hand, he has attacked Trump for his trade war against China, which he said has protected large businesses while hurting ordinary American workers. On the other, he does not want to appear soft on China or too big a fan of free trade, and so has promised a “pro-American worker trade strategy.” Like Trump, Biden said he intends to take “aggressive trade enforcement actions” against anyone he believes is guilty of currency manipulation or other anti-competitive trade practices. But he has said that unlike Trump, he will enlist the support of U.S. allies to do so on a multilateral level. One major difference with the current president is Biden’s plan to levy a “carbon adjustment fee” on goods coming from countries that fail to meet climate and environmental obligations. This, he said, will stop highly polluting countries undercutting manufacturing in the U.S. Biden was part of the Obama administration, which oversaw spectacular growth in U.S. oil and gas production. As president, he would launch a different energy revolution aimed at decarbonizing the U.S. power generation system within 15 years and delivering an economy with net-zero emissions by 2050. He would spend US$2 trillion over four years to add vast renewable-energy capacity, electrify much of the transport system and research new technologies, from advanced nuclear facilities to green hydrogen, grid-scale batteries to carbon capture and storage. Biden said this would create millions of jobs, in everything from electric-car manufacturing to the installation of new clean-energy infrastructure, and has touted it as a way to drag the U.S. out of its pandemic-induced recession. Biden said he does not have a foreign policy, but he has a “plan for restoring American leadership.” That counts as music to multilateralists’ ears: a promise to undo the isolationist instincts of the Trump administration that have appalled close allies and undermined U.S. participation in international institutions. A Biden administration is set to return U.S. foreign policy to a more familiar kilter — snug relations with Europeans and traditional allies, unswerving commitment to tackle climate change — rejoining the Paris climate change accord and pushing countries to set exacting, enforceable targets — and restarting nuclear talks with Iran. A Biden administration would seek to lead a global coronavirus response and rejoin the WHO, from which the Trump administration has withdrawn. He has pledged to reverse Trump’s controversial immigration policies through executive actions that would undo his predecessor’s draconian approach. They include raising the annual cap on refugees to 125,000 from the 18,000 ceiling set by Trump, narrowing deportation efforts to target only people convicted of violent crimes, and canceling policies that make it harder for people to claim asylum at the U.S.-Mexico border. (SD-Agencies) | 