When Joe Biden steps to the podium Thursday night as the Democratic Party's presidential nominee, he will offer himself to a wounded, meandering nation as balm and as a bridge.
A 77-year-old steeped in the American political establishment for a half-century, Biden cannot himself embody the kind of generational change that Presidents John F Kennedy or Bill Clinton represented.
Even with wide-ranging proposals for government action on health care, taxation and the climate crisis, he will never be the face of a burgeoning progressive movement.
As a white man, Biden cannot know personally the systemic racism now at the forefront