Biden Accepts Nomination, Dings McCain

Newly-minted VP nominee Joe Biden addressed the DNC delegates tonight after an emotional introduction from his son Beau. Sen. Biden spent a good portion of his speech talking about family. His mother was in the convention hall, and the cameras showed her (to the delegates' delight) on the huge in-house monitors as Biden talked about the lessons she taught him:

Failure at some point in your life is inevitable, but giving up is unforgivable. As a child I stuttered, and she lovingly would look at me and told me: "Joey, it's because you're so bright you can't get the thoughts out quickly enough." When I was not as well dressed as the other kids, she told me: "Joey, you're so handsome honey, you're so handsome." And when I got knocked down by guys bigger than me, and this is the God's truth, she sent me back out the street and told me: "bloody their nose so you can walk down the street the next day." And that's what I did.

At one point Biden appeared to confuse the Republican nominee with the sitting President. Was it really a mistake?

You know, folks, that's the America that George Bush has left us, and that's the America we'll continue to get if George--excuse me if John McCain is elected president of the United States of America. Freudian slip! Freudian slip!

Biden may not have hit a home run with his delivery, but he did everything he needed to. He talked up Obama's biography, and he dove right into the sharp-tongued critiques of McCain. Biden first dinged McCain on foreign policy issues -- an area in which he bolsters Obama's relatively thin resume.

As we gather here tonight, our country is less secure and more isolated that it has been any time it has in recent history. The Bush foreign policy has dug us into a very deep hole, with very few friends to help us climb out. And for the last seven years, the administration has failed to face the biggest the biggest forces shaping this century. The emergence of Russia, china and India's great powers, the spread of lethal weapons, the shortage of secure supplies of energy, food and water. The challenge of climate change and the resurgence of fundamentalism in Afghanistan and Pakistan, the real central front in the war on terror.

He also made a clear appeal to the working-class voters that Hillary Clinton dominated in the primaries:

When I look at their young children--and when I look at my grandchildren--I realize why I'm here. I'm here for their future. I am here for everyone I grew up with in Scranton and Wilmington. I am here for the cops and firefighters, the teachers and assembly line workers--the folks whose lives are the very measure of whether the American dream endures.

After his speech, Biden was joined onstage by a huge crowd of extended family members and -- in a surprise appearance -- Barack Obama. The two running-mates and their wives will embark next week on a bus tour of Ohio, Pennsylvania, and Michigan -- three general-election battleground states that Hillary Clinton carried in the primaries.

-- Evie Stone

1:02 AM ET | 08-28-2008 | permalink

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