NEW YORK — Democ­rats for­mal­ly nom­i­nat­ed Joe Biden as their can­di­date for pres­i­dent Tues­day night, with par­ty elders, a new gen­er­a­tion of politi­cians and vot­ers in every state join­ing togeth­er in an extra­or­di­nary, pan­dem­ic-cramped vir­tu­al con­ven­tion to send him into the gen­er­al elec­tion cam­paign to oust Pres­i­dent Don­ald Trump.

For Biden, who has spent more than three decades eye­ing the pres­i­den­cy, the moment was the real­iza­tion of a long-sought per­son­al goal. But it played out in a way that the 77-year-old Biden couldn’t have imag­ined just months ago as the coro­n­avirus prompt­ed pro­found change across the coun­try and the pres­i­den­tial campaign.

Instead of a Mil­wau­kee con­ven­tion hall as ini­tial­ly planned, the roll call of con­ven­tion del­e­gates played out in a com­bi­na­tion of live and record­ed video feeds from Amer­i­can land­marks packed with mean­ing: Alabama’s Edmund Pet­tus Bridge, the head­wa­ters of the Mis­sis­sip­pi Riv­er, a Puer­to Rican com­mu­ni­ty still recov­er­ing from a hurricane.

Biden cel­e­brat­ed his new place in his­to­ry along­side his wife and grand­chil­dren in a Delaware school library in the midst of the most­ly online con­ven­tion. His wife of more than 40 years, Jill Biden, lat­er spoke in her prime-time appear­ance in deeply per­son­al terms, rein­tro­duc­ing the life­long politi­cian as a man of deep empa­thy, faith and resilience to Amer­i­can vot­ers just 77 days before votes are counted.

“There are times when I couldn’t imag­ine how he did it — how he put one foot in front of the oth­er and kept going,” she said. “But I’ve always under­stood why he did it. He does it for you.”

Biden has the sup­port of a sprawl­ing polit­i­cal coali­tion, as demon­strat­ed again dur­ing Tuesday’s con­ven­tion, although nei­ther his­to­ry nor enthu­si­asm is on his side.

Just one incum­bent pres­i­dent has been defeat­ed in the last four decades. And Biden’s sup­port­ers con­sis­tent­ly report that they’re moti­vat­ed more by oppo­si­tion to Trump than excite­ment about Biden, a life­long politi­cian who would be the old­est pres­i­dent ever elect­ed. That deficit could hurt turnout among less con­sis­tent vot­ers, par­tic­u­lar­ly minori­ties and younger vot­ers, whom Biden needs to show up in great num­bers this fall.

Biden used the sec­ond night of the four-day con­ven­tion to fea­ture a mix of par­ty elders from both par­ties to make the case that he has the expe­ri­ence and ener­gy to repair chaos that Trump has cre­at­ed at home and abroad.

For­mer Pres­i­dent Bill Clin­ton and for­mer Sec­re­tary of State John Ker­ry — and for­mer Repub­li­can Sec­re­tary of State Col­in Pow­ell — were among the heavy hit­ters on a sched­ule that empha­sized a sim­ple theme: Lead­er­ship mat­ters. For­mer Pres­i­dent Jim­my Carter, now 95 years old, also made a brief appearance.

“Don­ald Trump says we’re lead­ing the world. Well, we are the only major indus­tri­al econ­o­my to have its unem­ploy­ment rate triple,” Clin­ton said. “At a time like this, the Oval Office should be a com­mand cen­ter. Instead, it’s a storm cen­ter. There’s only chaos.”

Tuesday’s speak­ing pro­gram under­scored Biden’s chal­lenge as he seeks to inspire a new gen­er­a­tion of vot­ers. While the Demo­c­ra­t­ic lead­ers of yes­ter­year can point to expe­ri­ence and achieve­ment, many of them are aging white men.

In the open­ing of the convention’s sec­ond night, a col­lec­tion of younger Democ­rats, includ­ing for­mer Geor­gia law­mak­er Stacey Abrams and New York Rep. Alexan­dria Oca­sio-Cortez, were giv­en a few min­utes to shine. But over­all, there was lit­tle room on Tuesday’s pro­gram for the younger stars of the party’s far-left wing.

“In a democ­ra­cy, we do not elect sav­iors. We cast our bal­lots for those who see our strug­gles and pledge to serve,” said Abrams, 46, who emerged as a nation­al play­er dur­ing her unsuc­cess­ful bid for gov­er­nor in 2018 and was among those con­sid­ered to be Biden’s run­ning mate.

She added: “Faced with a pres­i­dent of cow­ardice, Joe Biden is a man of proven courage.”

Biden is fight­ing unprece­dent­ed logis­ti­cal chal­lenges to deliv­er his mes­sage dur­ing an all-vir­tu­al con­ven­tion this week as the coro­n­avirus epi­dem­ic con­tin­ues to claim hun­dreds of Amer­i­can lives each day and wreaks hav­oc on the economy.

He will for­mal­ly accept the Demo­c­ra­t­ic pres­i­den­tial nom­i­na­tion inside a most­ly emp­ty Delaware con­ven­tion hall on Thurs­day. His run­ning mate, Cal­i­for­nia Sen. Kamala Har­ris, will become the first woman of col­or to accept a major party’s vice pres­i­den­tial nom­i­na­tion on Wednesday.

Until then, Biden is pre­sent­ing what he sees as the best of his sprawl­ing coali­tion to the Amer­i­can elec­torate in a for­mat unlike any oth­er in his­to­ry. There is no live audi­ence for any of the speak­ers, who have so far deliv­ered their remarks stand­ing or seat­ed alone in most­ly pre­re­cord­ed videos.

For a sec­ond night, the Democ­rats fea­tured Republicans.

Pow­ell, who served as sec­re­tary of state under George W. Bush and appeared at mul­ti­ple Repub­li­can con­ven­tions in years past, was endors­ing the Demo­c­ra­t­ic can­di­date. In a video released ahead of his speech, he said, “Our coun­try needs a com­man­der in chief who takes care of our troops in the same way he would his own fam­i­ly. For Joe Biden, that doesn’t need teaching.”

Pow­ell joins the wid­ow of the late Ari­zona Sen. John McCain, Cindy McCain, who was expect­ed to stop short of a for­mal endorse­ment but talk about the mutu­al respect and friend­ship her hus­band and Biden shared.

While there have been indi­vid­ual mem­bers of the oppos­ing par­ty fea­tured at pres­i­den­tial con­ven­tions before, a half dozen Repub­li­cans, includ­ing the for­mer two-term gov­er­nor of Ohio, have now spo­ken for Demo­c­rat Biden.

The Democ­rats’ par­ty elders played a promi­nent role through­out the night.

Clin­ton, who turns 74 on Tues­day, hasn’t held office in two decades. Ker­ry, 76, was the Demo­c­ra­t­ic pres­i­den­tial nom­i­nee back in 2004 when the youngest vot­ers this fall were still in dia­pers. And Carter is 95 years old.

Biden’s team did not give the night’s cov­et­ed keynote address to a sin­gle fresh face, pre­fer­ring instead to pack the slot with more than a dozen Democ­rats in their 20s, 30s and 40s. The younger lead­ers includ­ed Abrams, Rep. Conor Lamb., D‑Pa., and the pres­i­dent of the Nava­jo Nation Jonathan Nez.

Clin­ton, a fix­ture of Demo­c­ra­t­ic con­ven­tions for near­ly three decades, addressed vot­ers for rough­ly five min­utes in a speech record­ed at his home in Chap­paqua, New York.

In addi­tion to rail­ing against Trump’s lead­er­ship, Clin­ton calls Biden “a go-to-work pres­i­dent.” Biden, Clin­ton con­tin­ued, is “a man with a mis­sion: to take respon­si­bil­i­ty, not shift the blame; con­cen­trate, not dis­tract; unite, not divide.”

It remains to be seen whether the uncon­ven­tion­al con­ven­tion will give Biden the momen­tum he’s look­ing for.

Pre­lim­i­nary esti­mates show that tele­vi­sion view­er­ship for the first night of the vir­tu­al con­ven­tion was down com­pared with the open­ing of Hillary Clinton’s onsite nom­i­nat­ing par­ty four years ago.

An esti­mat­ed 18.7 mil­lion peo­ple ed cov­er­age between 10 and 11 p.m. on ABC, CBS, NBC, CNN, Fox News Chan­nel and MSNBC, the Nielsen com­pa­ny said. Four years ago, the open­ing night drew just under 26 mil­lion viewers.

Biden’s cam­paign said an addi­tion­al 10.2 mil­lion streamed the con­ven­tion online Mon­day night.

“We are pro­duc­ing a dig­i­tal con­ven­tion, and peo­ple are ing,” Biden spokesman T.J. Duck­lo tweeted.

Mean­while, Trump con­tin­ued to court bat­tle­ground vot­ers in an effort to dis­tract from Biden’s con­ven­tion. Appear­ing in Ari­zona near the Mex­i­can bor­der ear­li­er in the day, the Repub­li­can pres­i­dent claimed a Biden pres­i­den­cy would trig­ger “a flood of ille­gal immi­gra­tion like the world has nev­er seen.”

Such divi­sive rhetoric, which is not sup­port­ed by Biden’s posi­tions, has become a hall­mark of Trump’s pres­i­den­cy, which has inflamed ten­sions at home and alien­at­ed long­stand­ing allies around the world.

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Price report­ed from Las Vegas. AP Wash­ing­ton Bureau Chief Julie Pace con­tributed to this report.