AOC Endorses Bernie Sanders at Democratic National Convention

Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez praised the Bernie Sanders campaign, calling it "a movement that realized the unsustainable brutality of an economy that rewards explosive inequalities of wealth for the few at the expense of long-term stability for the many" #DemConvention

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Democrats opened the second night of their convention with a collage of keynote speakers, each given just enough time to voice support for Joe Biden and urge voters to turn out in droves to defeat President Donald Trump in November.

“Our choice is clear: a steady experienced public servant who can lead us out of this crisis just like he’s done before -- or a man who only knows how to deny and distract,” said Stacey Abrams, who narrowly lost a race for governor of Georgia in 2018. “America needs Joe Biden.”

Democrats against convened by video on a night when the party held a virtual roll call of states to make Biden’s presidential nomination official. As on Monday, Democratic Party stalwarts tore into Trump’s temperament, his stewardship of the economy and his handling of the coronavirus pandemic.

“If you want a president who defines the job as spending hours a day watching TV and zapping people on social media, he’s your man,” former President Bill Clinton said in prerecorded remarks.

Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York, a star of the party’s progressive wing, also got to speak -- but only for about 90 seconds, a limit her supporters have complained about. Trump is portraying Biden as a captive of what he calls the party’s “Radical Leftists.”

In her speech seconding the nomination of Biden’s primary season opponent, Senator Bernie Sanders, Ocasio-Cortez praised “fidelity and gratitude to a mass people’s movement working to establish a 21st century social, economic and human rights, including our guaranteed health care, higher education, living wages and labor rights for all people in the United States.”

Rather than the traditional convention keynote that can fuel one star’s rise -- then-Arkansas Governor Clinton had the keynote in 1988 and spoke again Tuesday as a former two-term president -- Biden’s team chose an array of Democrats to share the coveted duty on Tuesday. All reflect his center-left philosophy.

A video montage jump-cut from speakers in living rooms and an industrial-style building to the Navajo Nation. “This year, all of us are on stage, and we’ve got a lot to say,” the keynoters said in unison, before participants counted off concerns about the coronavirus, unemployment and exhausted parents juggling work and child care.

Read More: Biden Plots His Vision of Party’s Future, Dismaying Progressives

The speakers included Representatives Colin Allred of Texas and Representative Conor Lamb of Pennsylvania, both political moderates who flipped Republican seats after Trump was elected president. Others were Biden supporters during the Democratic primary season: South Carolina State Senator Marlon Kimpson, Nevada State Senator Yvanna Cancela and Pennsylvania State Representative Malcolm Kenyatta.

The theme for the second night of the virtual convention is “Leadership Matters,” with speeches by former presidents Jimmy Carter and Clinton -- his legendary verbosity constricted through a prerecorded address -- and John Kerry, the former secretary of state and 2004 Democratic presidential nominee.

“If you want a president who defines the job as spending hours a day watching TV and zapping people on social media, he’s your man,” Clinton said in his remarks.

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