Joe Biden said Friday he had secured the delegates needed to clinch the Democratic nomination and face Donald Trump in November’s US presidential election.
“Folks, tonight we secured the 1,991 delegates needed to win the Democratic nomination,” the former vice president said on Twitter.
“I’m going to spend every day fighting to earn your vote so that, together, we can win the battle for the soul of this nation.”
Biden passed the 1,991 threshold to secure his party’s nomination as counting continued from Tuesday’s round of Democratic primaries.
He had been the presumptive Democratic challenger since Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders dropped out of the race in April and endorsed his onetime rival’s run at the White House.
Biden reached the threshold with the country wracked by protests over the death of African-American George Floyd at the hands of police.
Floyd’s death has reignited long-felt anger over police killings of African-Americans and unleashed a nationwide wave of civil unrest unlike any seen in the US since Martin Luther King Jr’s 1968 assassination.
“This is a difficult time in America’s history. And Donald Trump’s angry, divisive politics is no answer,” Biden wrote in a post on Medium.
“The country is crying out for leadership. Leadership that can unite us. Leadership that can bring us together.”
