Joe Biden defended his legacy on Monday in a lengthy valedictory speech to the Democratic convention, saying his presidency reunited the country after the divisiveness of the Trump years.
Biden called on the convention to support Kamala Harris as his successor, saying choosing her as his vice-president was “the best decision I made in my whole career”.
“She’s tough. She’s experienced. And she has enormous integrity . . . and like all the best presidents, she was also vice-president,” he said to laughter in the convention arena. “Join me in promising your whole heart to this effort, where my heart will be.”
But the president’s advocacy of Harris was something of a coda on a speech that could otherwise have been a pitch for another four years in office.
The nearly 50-minute-long address, which extended beyond primetime TV in nearly half of the country, included a detailed recitation of Biden’s legislative victories and frequently resurrected older talking points now abandoned by the young Harris campaign.
He argued he had set the country on a solid economic course and touted foreign policy successes, especially the expansion of Nato and help for Ukraine against Russia’s invasion. “Three years later, Ukraine is still free,” he said.
The president was greeted by an extended standing ovation from a packed arena that broke into repeated chants of “Thank you, Joe!” throughout his speech. His remarks came shortly after Harris made a surprise appearance at the convention, hailing Biden’s “lifetime of service”.
Biden’s speech at the Chicago convention presented a delicate balancing act for the 81-year-old president, who reluctantly stepped aside last month under pressure from party leaders concerned about his age and fitness for office.
“It has been the honour of my lifetime to serve as your president,” Biden said towards the end of his address. “I love the job. But I love my country more.”
He was at times wistful, saying, “I’ve been too young to be in the Senate and too old to stay as president”. He paraphrased a song popularised by a mini-series about the second world war: “America, I gave my best to you. I made a lot of mistakes in my career. But I gave my best to you.”
The Democratic party is trying to unite behind Harris after months of infighting over White House policies in the Middle East and bitterness surrounding the effort to remove Biden as the party’s presidential candidate.
The convention came against a backdrop of protests in Chicago against Biden’s support for Israel in Gaza, with thousands of police deployed on the streets and a wide security cordon erected around the conference venue.
Biden on Monday night vowed to secure a ceasefire deal in Gaza and “finally end this war now”. He added: “Those protesters out in the street, they have a point. A lot of innocent people are being killed, on both sides.”
Biden was due to fly out of Chicago after his speech and skip the rest of the convention, which will culminate on Thursday with Harris’s formal nomination as the Democratic presidential candidate.
Other big-name speakers this week will include former presidents Barack Obama and Bill Clinton, and Harris’s running mate, Minnesota governor Tim Walz.
Hillary Clinton, the former US secretary of state and the party’s 2016 presidential candidate, received some of the biggest ovations of the convention’s first night in her speech earlier in the evening, calling Biden “democracy’s champion, at home and abroad”.
Clinton also used her address to mark the rise of women in American politics, praising Harris for having the “character, experience and vision” to break the “highest, hardest glass ceiling” by becoming the first female US president.
“This is our time,” Clinton said, after recalling her own nomination in 2016 and the candidacy of Geraldine Ferraro, who was the party’s first woman vice-presidential candidate in 1984. “This is when we stand up. This is when we break through.”
She added: “And yes, she will restore abortion rights nationwide”, to one of the largest cheers of the night.
On the convention floor, delegates praised Biden but said Harris had injected new energy into the race.
“It was painful for me to watch him struggle”, said Steven Kelley, a delegate from Pennsylvania. “I will always stand by Joe, but the decision that he made shows how great a human being he is.”
“It has nothing to do with whether he’s qualified to be president,” said Sean Casten, a Democratic congressman from Illinois. “It’s hard to argue with what’s happened in the subsequent four weeks: the energy level, the passion . . . that enthusiasm.”
“I thought we could win before,” said Tom Daschle, the former Democratic Senate minority leader. “Now I know we can win.”
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