Joe Biden will set the tone for a bruising general election battle against President Donald Trump as he accepts the Democratic nomination Thursday in a speech testing his ability to connect with voters in the virtual campaign format of the pandemic. #DNC #DemocraticNationalConvention #JoeBiden #KamalaHarris #BidenHarris

The former vice president’s prime-time address will culminate four nights of withering attacks against Trump by Democrats who have called the president unfit for office and incapable of handling the coronavirus outbreak and a record surge in unemployment. In addition to laying a marker against his Republican opponent, Biden will also seek to uphold the centrist themes of this year’s convention while keeping party progressives in the fold.

The nominee will speak live at the Chase Center in Wilmington, Delaware, without a packed house of supporters after the coronavirus forced Democrats to turn their convention into a largely virtual event. The setting may test Biden, who like many politicians, draws energy from a crowd and relishes making a personal connection with the audience.

Biden, 77, will be closely scrutinized by Trump, who’s ready to pounce on any misstep as a sign of age-related decline. Yet, although he’s a gaffe-prone politician who was largely overshadowed by the charisma of President Barack Obama during their eight years in the White House, Biden’s allies say they are confident he will rise to the moment.

“He’s not Barack Obama, he’s not Michelle Obama, he’s not Bill Clinton, he’s not even Hillary Clinton,” said Patti Solis Doyle, Biden’s 2008 campaign chief of staff. “But he is very good when he speaks about the things that he cares about and that’s predominantly his family, his mother, his father, his upbringing.”

The speech comes as Biden’s edge over Trump has steadied at around 7 percentage points nationally, according to the RealClearPolitics average of polls.

Biden supporters argue that his oratory skills are often discounted and that he’s delivered when he must, including during his vice-presidential debates against Sarah Palin in 2008 and Paul Ryan in 2012, and the 1987 Senate hearing in which conservative judge Robert Bork was denied a Supreme Court seat.

Representative Cedric Richmond of Louisiana, a co-chair of Biden’s campaign, pointed to Biden’s speech in Philadelphia in June after the death of George Floyd as an example of the former vice president’s abilities.

“It spoke to people,” he said. “I think people feel him when he speaks. I think that’s one of the things that aids him. When he speaks, he connects with people. I expect him to connect with a whole bunch of people who are watching.”

The Trump campaign, however, is poised to amplify the slightest slipup.

“It’s obvious that Joe Biden has lost his fastball, but reading a speech from a teleprompter in a tightly-controlled setting is hardly a vigorous test,” Tim Murtaugh, a Trump campaign spokesman, said in a statement.

On Tuesday night, the president’s allies on Twitter seized on a screenshot of a moment in which Biden was not looking directly at a camera to suggest he didn’t know where he was. And a new ad from Trump’s team juxtaposes Biden speaking four years ago with recent clips in which he appears to lose his train of thought.

Questions about Biden’s acuity are “ridiculous,” Jill Biden said Wednesday. “Joe’s on the phone every single minute of the day talking to governors who are calling him and Nancy Pelosi,” she said on NBC’s “Today Show.” “He’s on the Zoom, he’s doing fundraisers, he’s doing briefings. He doesn’t stop from 9 in the morning until 11 at night, so that’s ridiculous.”

Republicans and some Democrats concerned about his age and the remains of a childhood stutter will be watching for missteps like when he several times referred to U.S. deaths from the coronavirus in the millions instead of thousands, or cringe-worthy remarks like those he recently gave to a group of Latino politicians and said that “unlike” African Americans, Latinos are more diverse. He later apologized.

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