After formally receiving the nomination as Barack Obama’s running mate, Delaware Sen. Joe Biden took the stage. His speech focused on his middle-class roots and the lessons he learned from his parents, and transitioned into emphasizing a call to revitalize the “American dream.”

While emphasizing his friendship with John McCain, he criticized the Arizona senator as wrong on everything “from Amtrak to veterans.” (See our bit on McCain’s Amtrak record here.) He criticized McCain for failing to support renewable energy in the Senate, while advocating policies that will increase tax breaks for the oil industry. “John voted again and again against renewable energy — wind, solar, biofuels. That’s not change, that’s more of the same.”

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An Obama-Biden administration, he said, will make “alternative energy a national priority … creating 5 million new jobs, and finally breaking us from the grip of foreign oil.”

Watch the speech:

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