Joe Biden won enough pledged delegates to clinch presidendial nomination in August

Biden will face  Trump in November presidential election

Former vice president of United States of America and Democratic Party front runner Joe Biden has won enough pledged delegates for the Democratic national Convention (DNC) in August to formally clinch the nomination. The AP now projects that Biden has won 1,993 delegates to the national convention, just over the magic number of 1,991 required to secure the nomination on the first ballot.

The AP delegate estimate reached the magic number of 1,991 delegates for Biden as seven states and the District of Columbia continue counting votes from Tuesday's primaries. Sanders, who endorsed Biden in April but remained on the ballot, failed to reach the 15% threshold to receive delegates in several contests, giving Biden more delegates than many political observers expected him to secure this week.

Joe Biden took a commanding delegate lead in mid-March and Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders dropped out of the race in early April. Bernie Sanders decision paved the way for former vice president to clinch the nomination. The 77-year-old, who served as Delaware's U.S. senator for decades before becoming vice president in 2009, will be his party's standard-bearer against President Trump.

Biden will take on Trump in a situation when USA is facing twin crises, the coronavirus and nationwide protests to racial injustice and police violence — that appear to be contributing to his lead over Trump in national polls, as well as in battleground states.

Biden spent much of 2019 battling questions about whether he had the campaign resources to compete with better-funded primary opponents and whether he was in step with the more progressive activists who have set the Democratic Party's national agenda since Biden and Barack Obama left the White House in 2017.

At the start of the 2020 campaign, he finished a distant fourth in Iowa and then fifth in New Hampshire. Despite that, Biden turned a strong South Carolina win into a dominant run in March on Super Tuesday, when most delegates were awarded, and he wrapped up the nomination in practical terms faster than any Democrat since John Kerry in 2004.

The massive coronavirus death toll, the record unemployment it created, and Trump's uneven and increasingly unpopular response to the crisis had boosted Biden's poll numbers in recent weeks.

Now, as the president has taken a largely divisive, confrontational approach to widespread protests, which have included some violence, in most American cities over the death of a black man in police custody, several national polls have given Biden a significant lead. The last poll released on Friday, which had Biden at 50% and Trump at 43%, a gap beyond the margin of error.

Biden has run from the start on the idea of his campaign as a battle for the "soul of America" and often implied his presidency would be a return to normalcy more than anything else. Responding to unrest and anger in the wake of George Floyd's killing by a police officer in Minneapolis, Biden doubled down on the first theme but seemed to walk away from the second.

"It was an honor to compete alongside one of the most talented groups of candidates the Democratic party has ever fielded — and I am proud to say that we are going into this general election a united party," Biden said in a statement emailed to reporters shortly after the AP's declaration. "I am going to spend every day between now and November 3rd fighting to earn the votes of Americans all across this great country so that, together, we can win the battle for the soul of this nation, and make sure that as we rebuild our economy, everyone comes along."

Biden also vowed to focus on the type of large-scale structural change that Sanders and Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren had spent the primary campaign calling for. "Let us vow to make this, at last, an era of action to reverse systemic racism, with long overdue and concrete changes," Biden said.

As much as Biden's camp is enjoying the wave of positive polls, many of his allies expect a much closer race this fall. The role of the young and working class supporters of Democratic socialist senator Bernie Sanders would be key factor in November elections.  The biggest challenge of Biden campaign will to mobilise the leftwing and more progressive supporters of Bernie Sanders.

The Trump campaign is down at the moment but not out.  Trump's overall approval rating has remained essentially unchanged despite continuous controversies. Polls and primary results show lagging enthusiasm for Biden among several key parts of the general election Democratic alliance, particularly younger voters of color.

                                                    Khalid Bhatti