Democratic candidate Joe Biden in Gettysburg, Pennsylvania.KEVIN LAMARQUE / Reuters
Abraham Lincoln delivered a historic 1863 address at Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, when the United States was plunged into its deepest division.
This Tuesday, the Democratic candidate Joe Biden, from the same city, emulated some words of the president who ended the Civil War: “A divided house cannot be maintained.
That is a great and eternal truth.
Today, once again, we are in a divided house.
But that, my friends, can no longer be, "said the candidate for the White House.
In his message with a presidential tone, he called on the unity of the Democrats and Republicans to work together to defeat the coronavirus pandemic.
"It is a virus, not a political weapon," he added.
The days leading up to Biden's speech have been marked by the hospitalization and prompt discharge of Donald Trump.
The US president said on Monday that you should not be afraid of the covid, that it could not determine the lives of citizens.
The message arrived on the same day that the United States exceeded 210,000 deaths, according to Johns Hopkins University.
And as soon as the president returned to the White House, he removed his mask.
"Wearing a mask is not a political statement, it is a scientific recommendation," Biden said Tuesday afternoon.
He also criticized the Republican's management and assured that the country could do "much better" with a national strategy that puts politics aside and is dedicated to saving lives.
Just over three weeks before the presidential elections on November 3, Biden, who leads the average of national polls by nine points, warned about the risk that the division it faces poses for the country.
He called those divisions "neither good nor normal."
The former vice president did not speak only to his bases.
“We need to revive the bipartisan spirit in this country;
the spirit of being able to work with each other, ”he said.
The message was to build bridges, not walls;
to seek unity when "too many Americans" are not seeking to overcome the existing division, "but to deepen it."
The Democratic candidate also defended that he does not believe that there is a choice between law and order - Trump's campaign emblem - and racial justice: "We can have both," he said.
The death of African-American George Floyd at the hands of the police in late May sparked the largest wave of racial protests in the United States in fifty years.
Although most of the demonstrations have been peaceful, there have also been episodes of violence.
Trump's stance from the beginning has been "law and order";
Biden's, condemning violence and affirming that "black lives matter."
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