Democratic Presidential nominee Joe Biden listens as his Vice Presidential running mate Kamala Harris speaks, Wilmington, Delaware, August 12, 2020

Presidential nominee Joe Biden and his running mate Kamala Harris pledge to lead the US out of crisis, as Donald Trump struggles in his attacks on the Democratic ticket.

Biden and Harris made their first appearance after her selection on Tuesday, speaking at a high school gymnasium in Wilmington, Delaware.

They set out a path for recovery from Coronavirus, economic downturn, and political and social divisions including racial injustice.

Harris summarized, “We need more than a victory on November 3. We need a mandate that proves that the past few years do not represent who we are or who we aspire to be.”

The candidates combined their vision with criticism of the Trump Administration for its failures of leadership. Biden asserted, “Working families need someone on their side in this nation because they certainly don’t have anyone in the president now on their side.”

He focused on the ongoing spread of Coronavirus across the US, more than six months after the first case:

[Trump is] issuing executive orders and making promises that in the end will defund the Social Security system while insisting that this virus will disappear.

The Joe Biden and Kamala Harris administration will have a comprehensive plan to meet the challenge of COVID-19 and turn the corner on this pandemic.

As Biden and Harris spoke, the US death toll reached 166,026, with another 1,489 fatalities on Wednesday. The daily increase was the highest since mid-May.

Confirmed cases are 5,197,118, an increase of 55,911.

Harris said:

This virus has impacted almost every country, but there’s a reason it has hit America worse than any other advanced nation. It’s because of Trump’s failure to take it seriously from the start. His refusal to get testing up and running. His flip-flopping on social distancing and wearing masks. His delusional belief that he knows better than the experts.

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The pair also cited the climate crisis and, on the third anniversary of white supremacy marches in Charlottesville, Virginia, Trump’s “politics of racist rhetoric and appeals to division”.

Biden concluded, “Now we need to get to work, pulling this nation out of these crises we find ourselves in, getting our economy back on track, uniting this nation, and yes, winning the battle for the soul of America.”

Trump’s Flailing Attacks

At his daily White House appearance, Trump said little of substance about the pandemic. He stuck to repeating his false claim, “We have better testing than any country in the world….When you look at the job that we’ve done compared to others, we’ve done a great job.”

He ranted over restrictions to contain the virus, pronouncing that Democratic state governors are detaining Americans in their homes: “In their prisons! They call ‘em prisons.”

And as he continued to ostracize the Government’s top medical experts, Dr. Anthony Fauci and Dr. Deborah Birx, he instead introduced Dr. Scott Atlas of the right-wing Hoover Institution — known for his derision of the stay-at-home measures recommended by almost all public health specialists, and close to Trump’s line that juveniles are “immune”: “Young people that age, without a co-morbidity, have virtually a zero risk from this.”

Trump’s inner circle, including son-in-law Jared Kushner and Hope Hicks, took note of Atlas’s appearances on Fox News. He now attends a morning meeting, separate from the White House Coronavirus Task Force chaired by Birx, which includes Kushner, Trump’s Presidential counselor Kellyanne Conway, and senior advisor Stephen Miller. While Birx is on the group, Fauci and the heads of the Food and Drug Administration and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention are not.

On Wednesday, Atlas promoted Trump’s insistence on schools with in-class instruction, even as the first reopenings this month have fed outbreaks: “The president’s priority is to open the schools and open them safely and have parents have the options to either use open schools or do whatever they can to eventually get back to open schools.”

See TrumpWatch, Day 1,300: Coronavirus — Another 1,075 Deaths as Trump Ally Backs Off Reopening

Trump spent most of the time assailing Biden and Harris, but in doing so, he risked further criticism for his racial and sexist language.

He railed that the Democrats would were “going to destroy the suburbs”, hours after he repeated his weeks-long proclamation that the destruction is because of programs for low-income housing.

Trump tried to deflect the criticism that he is appealing to white suburban voters — where Biden has an edge in polling — by stigmatizing people of color: “30% plus of the people in suburbia are minorities. African American, Asian American, Hispanic American – they’re minorities – 30%. The number is even higher, they say 35% but I like to cut it a little bit lower.”

Trump repeated his portrayal of Harris as “nasty”, an epithet which he has often used for women whom he dislikes.

He charged, “She is very bad on fact. She is very weak on facts,” a curious claim from a man who has made 20,000 false or misleading claims while in the White House.

Harris batted back Trump’s attempted attacks. Responding to the jibe that she was overly “ambitious”, she said she “mindful of all the heroic and ambitious women before me, whose sacrifice, determination and resilience makes my presence here today even possible”.

Biden turned Trump’s language into support for the Democratic agenda:

Is anyone surprised Donald Trump has a problem with a strong woman or strong women across the board?

We know that more is to come, so let’s be clear.

If you’re a working person, worried about whether or not you have a job to go to, whether or not you’ll be able to pay your mortgage, pay your rent, worried about the poison in the air you breathe, the water you drink, worried about your civil rights, even your basic right to dignity which is under attack with this administration, Kamala Harris has had your back and now we have to have her back.