Biden to deliver DNC nomination speech
Today marks the fourth and final day of the 2020 US Democratic National Convention (DNC).
Over the past four days, the DNC has attempted to unify the disparate ideological components of the Democratic Party behind former vice president Joe Biden and his running mate, Senator Kamala Harris. Speeches were delivered by leftist leaders such as Andrew Yang and Senator Bernie Sanders as well as more centrist leadership in Senators Doug Jones and Amy Klobuchar. Notably, the DNC for the first time featured speeches from Republican leaders like Ohio Governor John Kasich, who implored moderate conservative and Republican voters to back Biden’s candidacy rather than four more years of incumbent President Donald Trump.
As the US election season enters the final stretch, America’s geopolitical foes have made attempts to influence the outcome. The US Senate has previously confirmed Russian interference in the 2016 election, notably via the Trump campaign, but Republican-led Senate committees have blocked security bills prohibiting coordination with foreign powers and strengthening electoral security. Fearing defeat, Trump has stymied attempts to expand voting-by-mail and encouraged supporters to question the legitimacy of the election.
Although Trump doesn’t have the power to interfere with the actual vote tabulation, he can use the bully pulpit to incite fear and question its validity—as he did by claiming widespread fraud in 2016—in the event of a loss. As Democrats conclude their convention, they will focus the next 11 weeks on a strategy to align leftists, moderates and conservatives in a unified coalition; party leadership strongly believes the only way to combat Trump’s inevitable accusations of electoral impropriety is to defeat the Republicans with an unambiguously large margin in every viable state.
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