President Joe Biden’s address to the Democratic convention late Monday night began with tears and a profession of love for his children and wife (his heart still goes “boom, boom, boom” when he sees her walk down the stairs, he said). What followed was a forceful summation of his rise to the presidency, a defense of his record and his own framing of his decision to end his political career after 50 years.
Unlike every other speech of the night, Biden’s was not explicitly about the Harris-Walz ticket. Rather, this was his time to define a legacy.
The president’s address — notably on the first night of the convention instead of the last, and running well past midnight on the East Coast — pulled from some of Biden’s most iconic speeches of the last five years: from when he denounced the neo-Nazis who marched in Charlottesville, to his 2022 Philadelphia address about the battle for the soul of the nation.