By nearly every measure, the credibility and influence of the United States in the world have diminished since President Barack Obama and I left office on January 20, 2017. President Donald Trump has belittled, undermined, and in some cases abandoned U.S. allies and partners. He has turned on our own intelligence professionals, diplomats, and troops. He has emboldened our adversaries and squandered our leverage to contend with national security challenges from North Korea to Iran, from Syria to Afghanistan to Venezuela, with practically nothing to show for it. He has launched ill-advised trade wars, against the United States’ friends and foes alike, that are hurting the American middle class. He has abdicated American leadership in mobilizing collective action to meet new threats, especially those unique to this century. Most profoundly, he has turned away from the democratic values that give strength to our nation and unify us as a people.

Meanwhile, the global challenges facing the United States—from climate change and mass migration to technological disruption and infectious diseases—have grown more complex and more urgent, while the rapid advance of authoritarianism, nationalism, and illiberalism has undermined our ability to collectively meet them. Democracies—paralyzed by hyperpartisanship, hobbled by corruption, weighed down by extreme inequality—are having a harder time delivering for their people. Trust in democratic institutions is down. Fear of the Other is up. And the international system that the United States so carefully constructed is coming apart at the seams. Trump and demagogues around the world are leaning into these forces for their own personal and political gain. ….

In order to regain the confidence of the world, we are going to have to prove that the United States says what it means and means what it says. This is especially important when it comes to the challenges that will define our time: climate change, the renewed threat of nuclear war, and disruptive technology.

The United States must lead the world to take on the existential threat we face—climate change. If we don’t get this right, nothing else will matter. I will make massive, urgent investments at home that put the United States on track to have a clean energy economy with net-zero emissions by 2050. Equally important, because the United States creates only 15 percent of global emissions, I will leverage our economic and moral authority to push the world to determined action. I will rejoin the Paris climate agreement on day one of a Biden administration and then convene a summit of the world’s major carbon emitters, rallying nations to raise their ambitions and push progress further and faster. We will lock in enforceable commitments that will reduce emissions in global shipping and aviation, and we will pursue strong measures to make sure other nations can’t undercut the United States economically as we meet our own commitments. That includes insisting that China—the world’s largest emitter of carbon—stop subsidizing coal exports and outsourcing pollution to other countries by financing billions of dollars’ worth of dirty fossil fuel energy projects through its Belt and Road Initiative....

Putin wants to tell himself, and anyone else he can dupe into believing him, that the liberal idea is “obsolete.” But he does so because he is afraid of its power. No army on earth can match the way the electric idea of liberty passes freely from person to person, jumps borders, transcends languages and cultures, and supercharges communities of ordinary citizens into activists and organizers and change agents.

We must once more harness that power and rally the free world to meet the challenges facing the world today. It falls to the United States to lead the way. No other nation has that capacity. No other nation is built on that idea. We have to champion liberty and democracy, reclaim our credibility, and look with unrelenting optimism and determination toward our future.

MAJOR ENDORSEMENTS FOR BIDEN. Joe Biden’s campaign Thursday will roll out a slate of established New Hampshire Democratic leaders who have joined his camp and are making their endorsements public here for the first time. Several of them previously endorsed former candidates.

Bill Shaheen is on board with the former vice president. The longtime Democratic National Committeeman and husband of Sen. Jeanne Shaheen gave his highly sought-after endorsement to Biden because, he said, “We need a president and a Senate who can bring dignity back to our country and immediately command respect on the world stage. Joe Biden can do both.”

Joining Shaheen with Biden are former state Senate President Sylvia Larsen, former state Democratic Party Chair Joe Keefe, longtime campaign strategist and former Cory Booker senior adviser Jim Demers and former U.S. Rep. Paul Hodes, who had been the state campaign director for former presidential candidate Marianne Williamson.

Also with Biden are Hodes’ wife, Peggo Horstmann Hodes, former state Sen. Peggy Gilmour, former Carroll County Democratic Chair Chris Meier and Manchester attorney and activist Maureen Manning.

The new Biden supporters also include three Manchester elected officials – Alderman-at-Large Dan O’Neil and Ward 10 Alderman Bill Barry, both of whom had backed U.S. Rep. Tim Ryan’s brief run for president, and Ward 2 School Board member Kathleen Kelley.