Analysis of Joe Biden’s Acceptance Speech

Vincent J. Curtis 

22 Aug 20

Watching Joe Biden deliver his acceptance speech was like watching a punch-drunk boxer respond to a bell.  He’s been giving speeches for fifty years, and if you if him three solid days of rehearsals, he can read the teleprompter when the lights go on.  But you could see in his face that he was struggling to hold it together for the twenty-five minutes he spoke.  Van Jones commented afterwards that that loud sigh you heard was the sound of Democrats relieved that Joe didn’t stumble in the speech. 

Still, if Joe’s speech was intended to quell fears of his advancing dementia, it didn’t.  Each sentence was its own paragraph.  The thoughts hardly flowed together in logical sequence.  It was a string of complete sentences, practically each one of which stood alone, unconnected to what went immediately before, or after.  Cogency just wasn’t there.

What was there was a lot of twaddle.  It seemed that Joe was unaware of everything that happened since he entered his basement in March.  He also failed to realize the fundamental contradiction of condemning some as irredeemable and then calling for unity and saying how good America was.

I didn’t get everything, but the analysis of the excerpts below with establish the case.

“The current president has cloaked America in darkness for much too long. Too much anger. Too much fear. Too much division.”

Joe establishes that he loathes Donald Trump and Trump’s fighting the culture war, which is supposed to go unfought.  Resistance to Democrats is supposed to be futile, and damn that Donald Trump for trying to prove the opposite.  This is boilerplate appeal to the progressive left.

“Here and now, I give you my word: If you entrust me with the presidency, I will draw on the best of us not the worst. I will be an ally of the light not of the darkness.”

The word of a Biden has proven to be not worth much.  The rest is twaddle.

“For make no mistake. United we can, and will, overcome this season of darkness in America. We will choose hope over fear, facts over fiction, fairness over privilege.”

This establishes the dichotomy of beauty and ugliness in America, according to Joe’s vision of things.

“It's a moment that calls for hope and light and love. Hope for our futures, light to see our way forward, and love for one another.”

Love for one another: except those neo-Nazis, Klansmen, and other deplorables, as we will hear about later on.

“It's about winning the heart, and yes, the soul of America.”

Do thinking people really want the government to be trying to ‘win their souls?’  Twaddle.

“Winning it for the generous among us, not the selfish. Winning it for the workers who keep this country going, not just the privileged few at the top. Winning it for those communities who have known the injustice of the "knee on the neck". For all the young people who have known only an America of rising inequity and shrinking opportunity.”

Whatever happened to that ‘love for each other?’  How can you love the privileged few, the unjust, an America of inequity?  Joe isn’t aware of the contradictions he is offering.

“The worst pandemic in over 100 years. The worst economic crisis since the Great Depression.

The most compelling call for racial justice since the 60's. And the undeniable realities and accelerating threats of climate change.”

The worst pandemic ought to be an admission that Trump is facing a big problem, but he fails to see it.  Likewise, the depression.  However, Trump has both well in hand.  These sentiments might have been sensible in mid-April, but since then much has changed, and Joe gives no indication of realizing it.  The call for racial justice comes from BLM and Antifa in, ironically, Democrat run cities and states.  Think about that for a moment.  Climate change has been off the front pages since the start of the pandemic, and this is a bone thrown to the progressive left, as is the bit about racial justice.

“We can choose the path of becoming angrier, less hopeful, and more divided.

A path of shadow and suspicion.

Or we can choose a different path, and together, take this chance to heal, to be reborn, to unite. A path of hope and light.”

Who is sowing that anger, loss of hope, and division and casting shadows of suspicion more than Democrats who have resisted Trump with the tenacity of fight to the last ditch hold outs?  Here again is the message that resistance to Democrats is futile.  You must vote Democrat, our they will continue the war.

Character is on the ballot. Compassion is on the ballot. Decency, science, democracy.

They are all on the ballot.”

Twaddle, twaddle, and more twaddle.  What’s on the ballot is the choice between a senile Biden who will be quickly replaced after the election by Harris and the AOC progressives, and Trump, who has given nothing but economic success and demonstrated that there is a good alternative to Democrat orthodoxy.

“5 million Americans infected with COVID-19.

More than 170,000 Americans have died.

By far the worst performance of any nation on Earth.”

Joe blames Trump for the pandemic and the deaths of so many people.  As for the worst performance on earth, that award goes to Andrew Cuomo of New York and Bill DeBlasio.  Trump and his supporters aren’t getting any of the love Joe spoke of.

“More than 50 million people have filed for unemployment this year.

More than 10 million people are going to lose their health insurance this year.

Nearly one in 6 small businesses have closed this year.

If this president is re-elected we know what will happen.

Cases and deaths will remain far too high.”

What will happen is the economy will re-surge, and by neglect, Joe’s admitting it.  If cases and deaths are already too high, they will remain so forever.  A small error in logic Joe’s speechwriters missed.

“A president who takes no responsibility, refuses to lead, blames others, cozies up to dictators, and fans the flames of hate and division.”

Trump and his supporters aren’t getting the love Joe promised.  Trump famously takes responsibility and leads, and that’s what annoys Democrats the most.  Trump is fighting the culture war, and that is the ‘fanning the flames of hate and division.”  As for cozying up to dictators, name one?  Trump’s kicked all their asses.  Besides, if you’re going to pick someone’s pocket, you’ve got to get close to them.

“As president, the first step I will take will be to get control of the virus that's ruined so many lives.”

How is Joe going to ‘get control of the virus?’  What even does that mean?  Trump has vaccines that will become available early next year.  Therapeutics have also advanced dramatically, thanks to Trump’s leadership.

“We will never get our economy back on track, we will never get our kids safely back to school, we will never have our lives back, until we deal with this virus.”

The economy is already rapidly coming back on track.  The problems with schools all seem to be in states and cities run by Democrats, who think keeping kids out of school and the economy locked down will lead to Trump’s defeat in Novemeber.  The virus is being dealt with, Joe, you just haven’t been paying attention.  You’ve been hiding in your basement.

“The President keeps telling us the virus is going to disappear. He keeps waiting for a miracle. Well, I have news for him, no miracle is coming.”

A great statement of hope there, Joe, that just disproved all Joe said about getting control of the virus. The vaccines are coming early in 2021.  Not a miracle, just hard work and leadership.

“We'll develop and deploy rapid tests with results available immediately.”

Already done, Joe.  Over 70 million tests done to date.  Starting from scratch, not even having established method in place at the start and done on the fly.

“We'll make the medical supplies and protective equipment our country needs. And we'll make them here in America. So we will never again be at the mercy of China and other foreign countries in order to protect our own people.”

Already done, Joe, or being done.  Looks like your speechwriters copied this from Trump’s platform.

“We'll put the politics aside and take the muzzle off our experts so the public gets the information they need and deserve. The honest, unvarnished truth. They can deal with that.”

Already done, Joe.  Been done since March.  By expert, do you mean Fauci or Dr. Scott Atlas, who seems to have a better grip on things than Fauci?  Atlas recently jointed the Trump team as an advisor.

“We'll have a national mandate to wear a mask-not as a burden, but to protect each other.

It's a patriotic duty.”

Conform, or else!  It’s your patriotic duty!  You mustn’t resist the dictates of worke progressivism, and wearing masks is a sign of compliance!

“As God's children each of us have a purpose in our lives.”

So, why do you support abortion, Joe?  Why do you support the extinction of the lives of God’s children?

“He used to say, "Joey, I don't expect the government to solve my problems, but I expect it to understand them."”

Funny, but Joe’s platform is all about government solving people’s problems, contrary to his dad’s advice.

“That's why my economic plan is all about jobs, dignity, respect, and community. Together, we can, and we will, rebuild our economy. And when we do, we'll not only build it back, we'll build it back better.”

Trump’s already bringing it back.  But Joey, your dad said he didn’t expect government to solve his problems.

“With 5 million new manufacturing and technology jobs so the future is made in America.”

Obama said that manufacturing jobs weren’t coming back.  There is no magic wand to do that.  Except Trump found that magic wand.  Where’d this number of 5 million come from?

“We can, and we will, deal with climate change. It's not only a crisis, it's an enormous opportunity. An opportunity for America to lead the world in clean energy and create millions of new good-paying jobs in the process.”

A bone tossed to the progressive left, a.k.a. AOC wing.  This is where Joe calls for the elimination of fracking, and the use of natural gas, coal, and oil, without actually saying so explicitly.  How are manufacturing jobs going to come back without fossil fuels, and energy production?  Not what are they going to make, but without electrical power, how can they make?

“For our seniors, Social Security is a sacred obligation, a sacred promise made. The current president is threatening to break that promise.

I will not let it happen. If I'm your president, we're going to protect Social Security and Medicare. You have my word.”

This is old, boilerplate Democrat fearmongering.  “The Republicans are going to take away your social security and you Medicare!”    This is like an instinctive twitch.  Sentient Democrats, and there aren’t many, know that Trump is bullet-proof on these points.  A sign of Joe’s diminished political instincts.

“Under President Biden, America will not turn a blind eye to Russian bounties on the heads of American soldiers. Nor will I put up with foreign interference in our most sacred democratic exercise -- voting.”

The Russian bounties story looks more and more like a resistance-inspired information operation.  There never was any truth to it, and Trump was never briefed on it so sketchy it was.  The Russians are supplying the Taliban with arms, which they were using to kill Americans.  The Taliban needed to be bribed too?  The focus makes no sense.  Obama let the Russians alone in the expectation that Hillary would win.  Only now are the Democrats pissed.  The Russians didn’t then, and won’t now, interfere with voting – the Democrats want to queer that process with mail-in balloting.

“Remember seeing those neo-Nazis and Klansmen and white supremacists coming out of the fields with lighted torches? Veins bulging? Spewing the same anti-Semitic bile heard across Europe in the '30s?”

I’m not feeling the love, Joe.  Where’s that love we’re supposed to have for each other – or does that no apply to Trump’s deplorables?  And I double anyone under 90 years old actually remembers the anti-Semitic bile that spread across Europe in the 1930s!

“That in America, everyone, and I mean everyone, should be given the opportunity to go as far as their dreams and God-given ability will take them.”

But if America is that systemically racist hell-hole you speak of, how can minorities get those opportunities?  The system is rigged against them, right?  And you and Obama ran this rigged system for the eight years prior to Trump.

“And we are a good and decent people.”

Except for all those racists, neo-Nazis, Klansmen, anti-Semites, knee-on-neck police, gun-owners, climate deniers, and all those other irredeemable deplorables who support Trump.

“With passion and purpose, let us begin -- you and I together, one nation, under God -- united in our love for America and united in our love for each other.”

Except for all those racists, neo-Nazis, Klansmen, anti-Semites, police, QAnon, gun-owners, climate deniers, privileged oppressors, and irredeemable deplorabls who support Trump.

Biden’s speech may have been the best of his career, but that isn’t saying much.  It was loaded with twaddle and contradiction.  He gave no confidence that he isn’t going senile, just that he managed to hold it together for twenty-five minutes without stumbling, after a lot of practice.

Watching Joe give his speech was like watching a punch-drunk boxer react to the sound of a bell.

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