Democrats on Tuesday night will seek to straddle themes of national security, American unity and generational change, with an array of speakers from the Democratic Party’s past — like Bill Clinton and John F. Kerry — and a few who appear to represent its future, like Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez.
Much as they did on Monday night, Democrats are set to cast the 2020 election as an existential test for the country, with an important early speech coming from Sally Q. Yates, the former acting attorney general who was fired by President Trump for refusing to enforce a travel ban on predominantly Muslim countries.
The central events of the evening figure to be closing remarks by Jill Biden, the former second lady and Joseph R. Biden Jr.’s wife, who occupies the same slot in the program that Michelle Obama took on the convention’s first night, and a virtual roll call vote of delegates from all the American states and territories that will culminate in Mr. Biden’s formal designation as the Democratic Party’s presidential nominee.
In a typical convention, the roll call vote is often one of the most entertaining parts of the week, featuring colorful speeches often brimming with parochial pride in each state’s delegation. This one promises to be a distinctive and perhaps more sober take on that tradition, with a combination of prearranged testimonials about Mr. Biden, descriptions of his campaign promises and personal accounts of adversity in the coronavirus pandemic and other crises of the Trump administration.
Tuesday’s events will again run from 9 p.m. to 11 p.m. Eastern time. Tracee Ellis Ross, the Emmy-nominated actress, will be the M.C. There are several ways to watch:
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The Times will stream the full convention every day, accompanied by chat-based live analysis from our reporters and real-time highlights from the speeches. Download our iOS or Android app and turn on notifications to be alerted when our live analysis starts.
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The official livestream will be here. It will also be available on YouTube, Facebook, Twitter and Twitch.
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ABC, CBS, NBC and Fox News will air the convention from 10 p.m. to 11 p.m. each night. C-SPAN, CNN, MSNBC and PBS will cover the full two hours each night.
Here’s more information on how to stream the convention on various platforms.
Who’s speaking tonight:
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Jill Biden, Mr. Biden’s wife and the former second lady
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Former President Jimmy Carter and Rosalynn Carter, the former first lady
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Former President Bill Clinton
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John Kerry, the former secretary of state and 2004 Democratic presidential nominee
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Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York
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Senator Chuck Schumer of New York
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Sally Yates, the former acting attorney general
Mario Cuomo shot to Democratic Party stardom with a rousing depiction of a tale of two cities in 1984. Ann Richards brought down the house in 1988 by declaring of George H.W. Bush: “Poor George, he can’t help it. He was born with a silver foot in his mouth.” Barack Obama launched himself toward the White House in 2004 with his stirring account of “the hope of a skinny kid with a funny name who believes that America has a place for him, too.”
But as the virtual Democratic National Convention begins its second evening on Tuesday, there will not be — for the first time in memory — a single keynote speaker handed the opportunity to capture the imagination of delegates and viewers at home.
Instead of designating a star for the party’s future, the Democrats have assembled a mash-up of 17 of the “next generation of party leaders” to speak via video montage Tuesday night. The party released a video teaser on Tuesday afternoon.
The list of speakers includes Stacey Abrams of Georgia, who considered a 2020 presidential run herself after falling short in a bid to win her state’s governorship in 2018; three members of Congress; eight state legislators; two mayors; the president of the Navajo Nation; and Florida’s agriculture commissioner — the only Democrat elected to statewide office in the critical battleground state.
As President Trump continued to try to sow doubts about the election with his latest assault on mail-in balloting, the postmaster general announced on Tuesday that he would suspend cost-cutting initiatives at the Postal Service until after November.
The announcement by the postmaster general, Louis DeJoy, came amid growing pressure from lawmakers, state attorneys general and civil rights groups, who have warned that the changes being made could disenfranchise Americans casting ballots by mail to avoid long lines during the pandemic. And it came as several states moved forward Tuesday with plans to sue the Trump administration over the election-year changes at the Postal Service.
“There are some longstanding operational initiatives — efforts that predate my arrival at the Postal Service — that have been raised as areas of concern as the nation prepares to hold an election in the midst of a devastating pandemic,” Mr. DeJoy said in a statement.
“To avoid even the appearance of any impact on election mail, I am suspending these initiatives until after the election is concluded.”
Mr. DeJoy vowed that retail hours at the post office would not change, that no mail processing facilities would be closed and that overtime would continue to be approved.
His announcement came as the attorney general of Washington State, Bob Ferguson, said he would lead a coalition of states filing a lawsuit in federal court charging that the changes could undermine the general election in November. Other states, including California, Pennsylvania, and New York, also said that they planned to file or join lawsuits.
“For partisan gain, President Trump is attempting to destroy a critical institution that is essential for millions of Americans,” Mr. Ferguson said in a statement. “We rely on the Postal Service for our Social Security benefits, prescriptions — and exercising our right to vote.”
In a sign of the severity of the backlash to changes at the Postal Service, Speaker Nancy Pelosi had summoned lawmakers back from summer recess to vote on legislation put forth by House Democrats that would revoke policy changes until Jan. 1, 2021, or the end of the pandemic, as well as include $25 billion in funding for the beleaguered agency.
Mr. DeJoy is still expected to face tough questioning about the changes at two congressional hearings in the coming days, including a virtual Senate hearing on Friday and a House oversight committee hearing on Monday.
Representative Rashida Tlaib, Democrat of Michigan, credited postal workers who raised alarms about changes in post offices nationwide for the postmaster general announcing that he would suspend changes at post offices around the country until after the November election.
But the words of the postmaster general, Louis DeJoy, are not enough, Ms. Tlaib said on Tuesday outside a Detroit post office.
“Those changes have already been made,” she said. “So until those machines get back into the sorting centers and until those boxes get back into our neighborhoods where we can actually put our ballots in and until the actions meet his statement, we continue to fight. We are witnessing in real time, the undermining of the Postal Service by the Trump administration. And we know it’s not right.”
There are concerns about absentee ballots not reaching local clerks in time, Ms. Tlaib said, but also concerns about slowing the delivery of prescription medicines, Social Security and coronavirus relief checks.
Keith Combs, the president of the Detroit chapter of the American Postal Workers Union, said four sorting machines that can handle up to 35,000 pieces of mail an hour had been removed from the city’s postal handling center. Several more have been removed from a postal center in Pontiac, a northern suburb of Detroit.
“There are some things that are going on that are not coincidental,” he said. “There are machines that are being removed from the plant. There is mail being slowed down. Overtime is being cut. Collection boxes are being shut out. Anyone who is saying anything different in Washington is not telling the truth. Things are being done that I’ve never seen during my 31 years in the Postal Service.”
Jocelyn Benson, Michigan’s secretary of state, said action was crucial not only on a federal level to ensure that absentee and mail-in voting go smoothly, but at the state level, too. She is fighting to get legislation passed that would allow absentee ballots postmarked by Election Day to be counted, even if the ballots are not delivered until after Election Day.
“In our August primary, more than 6,400 voters mailed in their ballots prior to Election Day, and they were received in the two days that followed,” she said. “We anticipate that number could double or more this fall, if things don’t change.”
It was an accidental viral moment for Joseph R. Biden Jr., at a time when his quest for the Democratic nomination seemed to be flagging. En route to an interview last year with the editorial board of The New York Times, Mr. Biden found himself in an elevator with Jacquelyn, a 31-year-old security guard who shyly admitted she was star-struck.
“I love you,” Jacquelyn told the former vice president. “I do. You’re like my favorite.” Mr. Biden, smiling, asked if she had a camera. The two posed for a selfie on her smartphone.
It was a fleeting exchange that happened to be captured by a film crew for “The Weekly,” an FX show produced in collaboration with The Times. Mr. Biden did not receive the paper’s endorsement — that went to Senators Amy Klobuchar and Elizabeth Warren — but his easy rapport with Jacquelyn struck a chord on social media.
On Tuesday night, Jacquelyn will make a more deliberate appearance before a national TV audience. The Biden campaign selected her as the first person to enter Mr. Biden’s name into nomination for president at the Democratic National Convention. She will speak before the start of Tuesday’s roll call vote.
It is an honor that dovetails with some of the themes the Biden team is keen to promote this week, including his support among working Americans and Black women in particular. And her appearance nods to what advisers believe is Mr. Biden’s chief political strength, a sense of empathy and ease with Americans from many walks of life.
Jacquelyn is employed by The Times as a security guard. She has no role in the newspaper’s journalism or editorial page, and she is not bound by rules that prohibit many of the company’s employees from engaging in political activity.
For Jacquelyn, who Biden aides said was declining to make her last name public, the Tuesday cameo will be the culmination of an unusual and unexpected role in a national campaign.
“I never thought I would be in a position to do this,” she told The Washington Post, which first reported on her role on Tuesday. “I never thought I was worthy enough to do this.”
When it comes to simulating the interactive vibe of a normal convention, the Democrats have a tall task tonight. That’s because this evening features the roll call vote — the headiest and most photogenic moment of any convention, where delegates officially cast their votes to select their party’s nominee.
Typically, each state and U.S. territory’s delegation would be assembled on the convention floor, and the M.C. would call on them alphabetically, with state representatives responding on a microphone and stating how many votes they were casting for each candidate.
Tonight, the D.N.C. will do its best to replicate the process virtually, in what it has called the “Roll Call Across America.” In the course of 30 minutes — far less than the hour-and-a-half of 2016 — delegations will cast their votes virtually, calling in from all 57 states and territories, as they take a moment on national TV to strut their local style and show some regional pride.
Up first is Alabama. Its spokeswoman, Representative Terri Sewell, plans to invoke the memory of John Lewis, the Alabama-born civil rights leader, in calling for the restoration of the Voting Rights Act, according to materials circulated by the D.N.C. in advance of the event.
Both Mr. Biden and his runner-up, Senator Bernie Sanders, will be nominated. Mr. Sanders is expected to receive over 1,000 delegates based on the results of the primaries.
Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez will give a nominating speech for Mr. Sanders. Senator Chris Coons of Delaware will deliver one for Mr. Biden.
After the individual speeches by two former presidents, Bill Clinton and Jimmy Carter, and Mr. Biden’s wife, Dr. Jill Biden, the singer John Legend will close out the evening with a musical performance.
Cindy McCain, the widow of Senator John McCain, will lend her voice to a video that will air as part of the Democratic National Convention on Tuesday — another nod to Republican voters who may be willing to cross party lines and support Joseph R. Biden Jr.
The video recounts the longtime friendship between Mr. Biden, a former Delaware senator, and Mr. McCain, who represented Arizona until his death in 2018.
“They would just sit and joke,” Mrs. McCain says in a video posted online in advance of the evening’s programming. “It was like a comedy show sometimes to watch the two of them.”
Mrs. McCain’s role was reported Tuesday by The Associated Press. She is not expected to explicitly endorse Mr. Biden in the video, according to an official with knowledge of the convention plans.
“My husband and Vice President Biden enjoyed a 30+ year friendship dating back to before their years serving together in the Senate, so I was honored to accept the invitation from the Biden campaign to participate in a video celebrating their relationship,” Mrs. McCain wrote on Twitter on Tuesday.
Tuesday will be the second consecutive night during which the convention will feature programming that could appeal to disaffected Republican voters. Monday night’s proceedings included remarks from several notable Republican figures, including former Gov. John R. Kasich of Ohio.
Mr. Biden and Mr. McCain faced each other on opposing tickets in 2008, when Mr. McCain was the Republican presidential nominee and Mr. Biden was Barack Obama’s running mate on the Democratic ticket.
Mr. McCain later would come under attack from President Trump, who as a presidential candidate in 2015 disparaged Mr. McCain’s Vietnam War service. Mr. Trump continued attacking him even after his death.
Live television viewership of Monday’s opening night of the Democratic National Convention fell by roughly 25 percent from 2016, according to Nielsen, with MSNBC emerging as the clear winner among the major networks.
About 18.7 million people watched traditional TV coverage of the convention from 10 p.m. to 11:15 p.m., the portion featuring speeches by Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont and the former first lady Michelle Obama. Four years ago, about 26 million people tuned in for the Democrats’ first night in Philadelphia.
The Nielsen figures do not include online and streaming viewers, a rapidly growing chunk of the American mass media audience. But there are few reliable ways to measure streaming views, and TV remains a key vehicle for politicians to reach a wide swath of voters, especially older ones.
A virtual event that bore little resemblance to pomp-filled conventions in large arenas in the past, the Democrats’ event featured the actress Eva Longoria as M.C. and included a range of live and prerecorded video segments.
MSNBC, whose prime-time is popular with liberals, attracted the biggest audience of any network with 5.1 million viewers, up from its usual 10 p.m. average. Fox News, which usually dominates cable ratings, dipped to 2.1 million, a drop from the 3.4 million who usually tune in at 10 p.m. for Laura Ingraham’s conservative commentary.
The Big Three broadcast networks — ABC, CBS and NBC — lost about 42 percent of their live audience from 2016. CNN’s overall audience dropped from 2016, but it was Monday’s best performer among viewers 25 to 54, the most important demographic in the TV news industry.
Ady Barkan, the progressive activist who became a champion for single-payer health care after receiving a diagnosis of the neurodegenerative disease A.L.S., is speaking tonight at the Democratic National Convention.
In an email conversation this week, Mr. Barkan discussed the prospects for single-payer health care in a moderate Democratic administration and his group Be A Hero’s push to flip the Senate. The exchange has been edited and condensed.
NYT: What will be your message to the Democratic Party, particularly as it relates to health care?
Barkan: I support Medicare for All and Joe Biden obviously doesn’t. Many Democratic voters agree with me, as evidenced by the overwhelming support in the exit polls during the primaries. And the pandemic and depression have proven how dangerous it is to tie insurance to employment. But we obviously have work to do to convince Democratic leadership to shift perspective on this.
NYT: Do you worry that the party will embrace you but reject the policies you advocate for?
Barkan: I definitely don’t want to be co-opted! I see my role, and the role of the progressive movement, as trying to get more and better Democrats elected, then pushing hard to get them to promote justice and equity.
I hope we can leverage our power in the House to pass strong legislation pressure the Senate to act, including by getting rid of the filibuster, and put transformative bills on President Biden’s desk.
NYT: Some progressives worry that the energy and money that has fueled some progressive victories in the last four years will dry up if President Trump is defeated. Do you?
Barkan: That is a critical concern. But I am hopeful that the progressive movement is much more powerful and sophisticated than we were when Obama took office. We saw that without movement energy then, not nearly enough was accomplished. Climate change, immigration reform, workers rights, gun control, even a public option health insurance — none of this happened, because of the filibuster and because the progressive movement didn’t pressure Obama to act quickly.
I don’t think we will make the same mistake. The movement for Black lives, for example, understands that it is Democratic mayors and city councils that are funding and protecting the police state. Everyone understands that President Biden will need to be pushed to be the transformative president America needs.
The Democrats’ biggest donors are used to being feted at the party’s national convention, breezing through a maze of tiered luxury suites and V.I.P. rooms with free-flowing appetizers, access and booze. This year, though, even those who have given $500,000 and up are stuck watching the same virtual event from home as the rest of us.
So ahead of the week’s virtual gathering, the party and the Biden campaign mailed along a care package to tide over any forlorn financiers: notebooks embossed with the number 46 (as in the potential for Joseph R. Biden Jr. to be the 46th president), hats, buttons, posters, a bag of “Cup of Joe” coffee (a moderate, friendly medium roast) and a bottle of confetti to be deployed whenever the mood strikes.
Like nearly everything else in American life, the already cloistered world of political fund-raising has been upended by the coronavirus pandemic, as campaigns and contributors alike figure out how to raise tens of millions of dollars without so much as a photo line (Zoom screenshots are a poor substitute).
The lack of a convention is especially a blow to the political arms of House and Senate Democrats, along with the Democratic Governors Association, which lay out their plans to woo donors months in advance. The Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee is still offering up to $35,500 packages to donors to attend three briefings with various senators and Senate candidates.
Still, it’s not the same as the serendipity of being there.
“There is nothing like the excitement of being in the convention hall and the daily nonstop of events, meetings and ad hoc hotel lobby meetups,” said Michael Kempner, a Democratic fund-raiser who has previously raised money for both Mr. Biden and Senator Kamala Harris of California, the Democratic nominee for vice president. “I am surprised how much I already miss it.”
WILMINGTON, Del. — Jill Biden, the former second lady of the United States who taught English at a community college throughout her time in the administration, is headed back to the classroom to give her convention speech on Tuesday.
Dr. Biden is expected to speak live from Brandywine High School in Wilmington, a spokesman said. She taught English at the school in the early 1990s and will be speaking from Room 232, her former classroom, Dr. Biden said on Twitter.
Dr. Biden was once a reluctant political spouse, but this campaign season she emerged as one of her husband’s most prolific and powerful surrogates, maintaining public campaign schedules at a pace that sometimes surpassed Mr. Biden’s during the in-person days on the trail early this year, and serving as a critical adviser on the most significant matters of the campaign.
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