The whole speech seemed to be a bit Norman Rockwell Post magazine cover to me. I’m close enough to Biden’s age, but he always reminds me of my father. There is a big break between the baby boom generation (well, mycounterculturesque part of it) and the previous Depression/WWII folks. Biden is a liberalish Democrat, but of the latter group.
I think the God Bless Our Troops part is probably what he’s been saying for decades. If I was a Biden speech writer I would have tweaked a lot of things in the speech, and also tried to adjust his presentation style a little. But it’s all Biden doing Biden and obviously a different planet in every way than the last four years, so unlike NYT and WaPo I wouldn’t be making headlines on picky points in the speech, none of which are anything I’m talking about.