President Joe Biden clinched the Democratic presidential nomination Tuesday after winning a majority of the delegates and setting up what is expected to be a closely contested rematch with Donald Trump.
Biden faced token opposition as the party’s biggest names, Govs. Gavin Newsom of California and Gretchen Whitmer of Michigan among them, opted to sit out the race rather than challenge a sitting president who had already beaten Trump once.
By clearing the field for Biden, 81, Democrats have gambled that he remains the party’s best shot at defeating Trump one more time.
“He was forced on us by the establishment, but he is manifestly not the same man that he was even three years ago, and that has made him less optimally fit for the office, if not simply unfit,” Liano Sharon, a Democratic National Committee member from Michigan told journalists.
The general election campaign opens with Biden an underdog against an opponent whom historians have ranked as the worst president in the country’s history.
Biden leaned into his likely opponent in a statement Tuesday night about becoming the presumptive nominee, arguing that “the threat Trump poses is greater than ever.”
“Donald Trump is running a campaign of resentment, revenge, and retribution that threatens the very idea of America,” Biden said in a statement released by his campaign. “He is glorifying dictators and pledging to become one himself on day one.”
Age remains Biden’s glaring vulnerability, polling shows. His State of the Union speech last week was a chance to reassure voters about his fitness, and his performance may have quelled some of voters’ misgivings. Biden delivered his 68-minute speech with unusual brio, seizing opportunities to go off script and parry Republicans who booed him throughout.
“The Biden campaign team got one of the most impressive opportunities at a reset with the State of the Union,” said Marc Morial, president of the National Urban League and a former mayor of New Orleans.
Biden’s challenge now, eight months before the general election, is to energize Democratic and independent voters who largely don’t credit him for the strong economy and a string of bipartisan bills he ushered through Congress.
