Who’s Joe Biden

23.03.2022

Joe Biden has tried to become president for three decades. That dream is now a reality.

Joseph Robinette Biden Jr. was born on November 20, 1942, in the blue-collar city of Scranton, Pennsylvania. At age 10 he moved with his family to the Wilmington, Delaware, area, where his father found work as a car salesman. The first of four siblings, Biden attended a series of Catholic schools, including the elite preparatory high school Archmere Academy.

Biden is a graduate of Syracuse University College of Law, passing the Delaware bar exam a year after graduating. He practiced for a while, simultaneously running for County Council, and eventually running for the US Senate.

He became the fifth youngest senator in US history in 1972. A few weeks later tragedy struck the Biden family. He lost his wife Neilia and one-year-old daughter Naomi in a car crash that also left their two sons, Hunter and Beau badly injured.

From 1973 to 2009, Biden served a distinguished Senate career. During his time in the Senate, Biden won respect as one of the body’s leading foreign policy experts, serving as chairman of the Committee on Foreign Relations for several years. His many foreign policy positions included advocating for strategic arms limitation with the Soviet Union, promoting peace and stability in the Balkans, expanding NATO to include former Soviet-bloc nations and opposing the First Gulf War. In later years, he called for American action to end the genocide in Darfur and spoke out against President George W. Bush’s handling of the Iraq War, particularly opposing the troop surge of 2007.

Critics have denounced his drafting of a 1994 crime bill that has been blamed for causing the mass imprisonment of minorities and his eulogising of Senate colleague Strom Thurmond, a man who began his political career as a segregationist.

He has also faced criticism for his role as the chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee in the controversial grilling of Anita Hill during the Supreme Court confirmation hearing of Clarence Thomas in 1991. Hill had accused Thomas of sexual harassment.

In 1987, having established himself as one of Washington’s most prominent Democratic lawmakers, Biden decided to run for the U.S. presidency. He dropped out of the Democratic primary, however, after reports surfaced that he had plagiarized part of a speech.

Biden kicked off his second attempt at the White House 20 years later, during the 2008 primary, but dropped out after securing only 1 percent of the delegates in the Iowa Democratic caucuses. Barack Obama tapped him to be his running mate after winning the Democratic nomination.

On April 25, 2019, Biden announced his candidacy in the 2020 Democratic presidential primaries. As a popular former vice president, he immediately entered the race with high name recognition.

By November 7, Biden was declared the winner of the 2020 presidential election by the Associated Press and major media outlets. Despite the outcome, President Trump continued to challenge the election by pressuring election officials and by filing more than 50 lawsuits in state and federal court, claiming there was “massive fraud.” But none of the courts ruled there was evidence of any significant voter fraud. On December 14, 2020, members of the Electoral College formally cast the majority of votes for President-elect Biden.