Former US vice president Joe Biden on Friday said that he had secured the delegates needed to clinch the Democratic nomination and face US President Donald Trump in November’s US presidential election.
“Folks, tonight we secured the 1,991 delegates needed to win the Democratic nomination,” he said on Twitter. “I’m going to spend every day fighting to earn your vote so that, together,we can win the battle for the soul of this nation.”
Biden passed the 1,991 threshold to secure his party’s nomination as counting continued from Tuesday’s round of Democratic primaries.
Photo: Reuters
He had been the presumptive Democratic challenger since US Senator Bernie Sanders dropped out of the race in April and endorsed his onetime rival’s run at the White House.
Biden reached the threshold with the country wracked by protests over the death of African-American George Floyd at the hands of police.
Floyd’s death has reignited long-felt anger over police killings of African-Americans and unleashed a nationwide wave of civil unrest unlike any seen in the US since Martin Luther King Jr’s 1968 assassination.
“This is a difficult time in America’s history. And Donald Trump’s angry, divisive politics is no answer,” Biden wrote in a post on Medium. “The country is crying out for leadership. Leadership that can unite us. Leadership that can bring us together.”
Biden’s response to the protests has been in marked contrast to Trump, who threatened to deploy the US military against US citizens.
In his first major public speech since going into isolation in the middle of March because of the virus outbreak, Biden called Floyd’s death a “wake-up call for our nation” and accused Trump of turning the US into a “battlefield riven by old resentments and fresh fears.”
The 77-year-old Biden, who served as deputy for eight years to the US’ first black president, Barack Obama, has pledged to tackle “systemic racism” if elected to the White House.
“We need equal justice — and equal opportunities — for every American now. We need a president who cares about helping us heal — now,” he wrote.
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