The Latest: Ocasio-Cortez nominates Bernie Sanders at DNC
Columbia Basin Herald | UPDATED 4 years, 5 months AGO
Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez has described the progressive movement started by Bernie Sanders as “a mass people’s movement” that’s working to move the country toward guaranteed health care and higher education.
The New York congresswoman gave brief remarks Tuesday night as she helped nominate the Vermont senator at the Democratic National Convention.
Ocasio-Cortez is widely seen as the successor of Sanders’ progressive flank of the party.
She says Sanders ran a historic grassroots campaign that realized that turns away from an American history checkered by violence, xenophobia, racial injustice and more and “that realizes the unsustainable brutality that rewards explosive inequalities of wealth for the few at the expense of long-term stability for the many.”
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HERE’S WHAT YOU NEED TO KNOW ABOUT THE DEMOCRATIC NATIONAL CONVENTION:
— Democrats' Day 2 focus: Trump's global leadership deficit
— Here’s what to watch on the second night of the convention
— After years of big moments, Bill Clinton's DNC role shrinks
— Cindy McCain details husband’s friendship with Biden for DNC
— At DNC, Jill Biden to get personal about family's struggles
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Follow AP’s election coverage at https://apnews.com/Election2020
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HERE’S WHAT ELSE IS HAPPENING:
Bill Clinton has delivered a stinging attack on President Donald Trump, saying the nation knows what he’d do with four more years in the White House: “Blame, bully and belittle.”
The former president addressed the second night of the virtual Democratic National Convention on Tuesday and said Trump “defines the job as spending hours a day watching TV and zapping people on social media.”
Clinton said, “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 also praised Democratic candidate Joe Biden but spent far more time on the offensive against Trump, who defeated his wife, Hillary, to clinch the presidency in 2016.
Bill Clinton played a major role in conventions for four decades but was limited to five minutes on Tuesday.
But even abbreviated, his appearance is tricky for Democrats. In the #MeToo era, as the party is focused on overt appeals to female voters, putting Clinton on stage is problematic for Democrats, given the numerous accusations of sexual misconduct against him.
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Caroline Kennedy is portraying Joe Biden as a public servant in the spirit of her father, who once challenged Americans to look at what they can do for their country.
The daughter of President John F. Kennedy spoke Tuesday at the all-virtual Democratic National Convention about helping Barack Obama choose Biden as a running mate while on his vetting team and then seeing him in action as vice president.
Kennedy served as the U.S. ambassador to Japan during the Obama administration and said she saw Biden as a leader who was tough but fair and commanded the trust and respect of other nations.
She appeared in a video speaking alongside her son Jack Schlossberg as they attempted to bridge a generational span across the party.
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Senate Democratic leader Chuck Schumer made a pitch at the Democratic National Convention not just for Joe Biden, but for flipping control of the Senate to Democrats.
Schumer said Tuesday: “If we are going to win this battle for the soul of our nation, Joe can’t do it alone. Democrats must take back the Senate.”
The New York Democrat outlined a potential 2021 agenda on making health care “affordable for all” and tackling income inequality, climate change and other issues, including the COVID-19 crisis.
With the Statue of Liberty as a backdrop, he said President Donald Trump has “demeaned” everything it stands for.
“America, Donald Trump has quit on you,” he said.
“We need a president with dignity, integrity, and the experience to lead us out of this crisis, a man with a steady hand and a big heart who will never — ever — quit on America,” he said. “That man is my friend Joe Biden. He will be a great president.”
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Former acting Attorney General Sally Yates says President Donald Trump has “trampled the rule of law” and treats the country like a “family business.”
Yates spoke Tuesday on the second night of the Democratic National Convention.
She said she never expected to be speaking at a convention but the future of the country was at stake. She said Trump’s Democratic opponent, Joe Biden, represented the best of the country and said America needed a president who respected its laws and “would restore the soul of America.”
Yates served as deputy attorney general during the Obama administration and stayed on as acting attorney during the early days of the T acting attorney general in the first days of the Trump administration, when she was fired by the president for refusing to defend the travel ban.
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A diverse group of Democratic leaders is delivering the keynote address on the second night of the party’s convention, appearing in a montage of spliced together clips to deliver a stinging critique of President Donald Trump’s leadership.
“We know Joe Biden. America, we need Joe Biden,” said Stacey Abrams, the former Georgia gubernatorial candidate.
The keynote address is a moment that has often been seized by political up-and-comers to deliver a soaring message. That includes Barack Obama, who rocketed to stardom in 2004 when John Kerry was the nominee.
But because the pandemic led to the cancellation of an in-person convention, Democrats opted to showcase a diverse group of local leaders in one video message on Tuesday.
“It didn’t have to be this bad. In the early days of the virus, Donald Trump didn’t listen to the experts,” said Nikki Fried, Florida’s agriculture commissioner.
Long Beach, California, Mayor Robert Garcia added: “We are facing the biggest economic and health crisis in generations because our president didn’t -- and still doesn’t -- have a plan.”
The speakers contrasted Trump’s leadership with that of Biden and their own, presenting the Democratic ticket as a safe choice for those who are worried.
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Former Secretary of State Colin Powell plans to say at the Democratic National Convention that he supports Joe Biden for president because of the values they share.
Powell served as secretary of state under Republican President George W. Bush from 2001 until 2005, and served as chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff under both Bush and Democratic President Bill Clinton.
In an advance clip of his speech Tuesday, Powell says that Biden shares “the values I learned growing up in the South Bronx and serving in uniform” and that he supports him for president because “we need to restore those values to the White House.”
Powell, who is a decorated four-star general, also says that the country “needs a commander in chief who takes care of our troops in the same way he would his own family.” Powell says Biden knows how to do just that because his son Beau served in the Army National Guard.
Powell called President Donald Trump a liar and endorsed Biden in June. He’s one of a handful of prominent Republicans, including former Ohio Gov. John Kasich and Cindy McCain, the wife of deceased Arizona Sen. John McCain, set to speak at the Democratic National Convention.
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A security guard who gushed over meeting Joe Biden in an elevator during his visit with The New York Times editorial board will be the first person to put his name into nomination for president at the Democratic National Convention.
Jacquelyn Brittany is one of three people putting Biden’s name into nomination on Tuesday night. She’ll be joined by Sen. Chris Coons and Rep. Lisa Blunt Rochester, both from Delaware.
The 31-year-old, who has declined to share her last name publicly, was filmed telling the former vice president “I love you” as she escorted him to the newspaper’s editorial board meeting. While Biden lost the paper’s endorsement, his team elevated the clip of Brittany as evidence that Biden appeals to average working Americans rather than elites.
Biden deputy campaign manager Kate Bedingfield tweeted that Jacquelyn’s was “the most powerful endorsement of the 2020 cycle.”
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Jill Biden will offer a personal glimpse into her family’s struggles and vouch for her husband’s ability to lead the nation through adversity during remarks at the Democratic National Convention.
According to advance remarks, she plans to say Tuesday night: “There are times when I couldn’t imagine how he did it — how he put one foot in front of the other and kept going.” She adds, “But I’ve always understood why he did it. ... He does it for you.”
Jill and Joe Biden have faced considerable personal loss. Biden’s first wife and infant daughter were killed in a 1972 crash. Jill and Joe Biden faced tragedy together when son Beau died of brain cancer in 2015.
Mrs. Biden will speak about what it takes to “make a broken family whole”: “The same way you make a nation whole. With love and understanding — and with small acts of compassion.”
Mrs. Biden will also speak about her work as a teacher. She’s delivering the speech from her former classroom at Brandywine High in Wilmington, Delaware.
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Cindy McCain is going to bat for Joe Biden, lending her voice to a video set to air during Tuesday night’s Democratic National Convention programming focused on Biden’s close friendship with her late husband, Republican Sen. John McCain.
In an advance clip from the video shared with The Associated Press, Cindy McCain talks about how then-Delaware Sen. Biden met her husband when John McCain was assigned to be a military aide for the senator on a trip overseas.
Cindy McCain is not expected to offer an explicit endorsement, but her involvement in the video is her biggest public show of support yet for Biden’s candidacy.
Both Cindy McCain and her daughter Meghan have been outspoken critics of President Donald Trump, and the family is longtime friends with the Bidens. Trump, a Republican, targeted John McCain personally in 2015, saying the former prisoner of war wasn’t a hero “because he was captured. I like people who weren’t captured.”
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Democrat Joe Biden says virtual gatherings are the conventions of the future and that he doubts they will go back to what they did before the coronavirus pandemic.
The presumptive presidential nominee made the comment Tuesday while addressing an online group of delegates from Florida.
He called this week’s virtual Democratic National Convention “the most creative, inclusive convention we’ve ever had.” He says, “I doubt we’ll ever go back to the same, exact convention we had in the past.”
Also on Tuesday’s call, Biden questioned whether President Donald Trump is smart enough to be president. Biden says he used to think Trump was “callous,” but now thinks “he’s just not smart enough to know what to do.”
The Democrats’ original convention in Milwaukee was delayed from July until August and scaled back amid the coronavirus outbreak.
The Republican Party will hold its own virtual convention next week.