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The veteran Democratic politician Joe biden became this Saturday the new president-elect of the United States, a position that he will assume at the age of 78 after a life dedicated to public service that culminates in the expulsion of Donald Trump from the White House.
Former vice president and “friend” of Barack Obama (2009-2017), Biden won the elections by insistence, after two frustrated attempts in 1988 and 2008, a primaries that he won by carom when most of his opponents withdrew in his favor and elections against the almighty Trump in the midst of a pandemic.
Biden decided to appear at the White House with the flag of recovering the legacy that Obama built and that Trump has destroyed after Hillary Clinton was the Democratic presidential candidate in 2016, without success.
During this last year he has had to face questions about his age and mental health, and it is that his constant lapses have been the reason for multiple gossip and an electoral weapon against him. Also because due to the pandemic, he has spent much of the campaign locked up in his Delaware residence.
Also, at 78 years old, it will be the oldest president in the history of the United States, which has also put all the spotlight on the vice president-elect, Kamala harris.
Friend of Obama and partner of Kamala
Biden has insistently wielded his eight years alongside his “friend” Barack Obama in the White House, as the icing on the cake to a long political career in the US Senate (1973-2009).
He also usually remembers his humble origins in Scranton (Pennsylvania) – his father was a car salesman – in the heart of the American industrial belt, which he has managed to win back for the Democrats after he opted for Trump in 2016.
With this, it appeals to two demographic sectors that are key for its majority: the African-American community and working-class white voters, whose confluence already allowed the comfortable victories of Democrat Obama in 2008 and 2012.
Added to this is his historic selection of Harris, a California senator, as his running mate.
“I have the great honor to announce that I have selected Kamala Harris – an intrepid fighter for the common citizen, and one of the best civil servants – as my running mate,” Biden said when revealing her choice last August.
Harris, 55, is the first African American and Asian woman to be nominated for Vice President by one of the two great parties, and with which Biden seeks to bring energy to his image as a seasoned and veteran politician.
It also becomes the natural successor to Biden four years from now, since the president-elect has stated that he will not run for re-election.
Moderate leftism
Biden won the primaries against an unsuspected internal adversary just a decade ago: the blazing rise of the leftist internal wing embodied by the senator. Bernie sanders, which he defeated after a party operation to unify the moderate sector that he ended up leading.
With his 36 years as senator and 8 as vice president of curriculum, from this sector he is accused of lacking the courage to stand up to powers like the Wall Street financier, and of not wanting to carry out the structural changes that the country requires.
The congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, one of the rising progressive stars and natural successor to Sanders, has acknowledged the growing rift within the Democrats by claiming that “in any other country it would be unthinkable” for her and Biden to be “in the same political party.”
Biden supported the Iraq war, defends the private health insurance system and pushed for a justice reform in the 1990s that ended with tens of thousands of African Americans behind bars for drug offenses.
Despite the fact that the two souls of the party have shown their division, especially due to the proposal of the left rejected by Biden to establish a universal healthcare system in the USA, the two platforms have enthusiastically teamed up to oust Trump from the White House.
Virtual charisma
Charisma is another of his strengths, something that he has shown in his warm and spontaneous interactions with citizens, but the unusual situation derived from the coronavirus pandemic has been an obstacle for him.
Biden has not carried out any massive campaign rallies and has concentrated all his efforts on developing a constant virtual campaign, which was the ridicule of the Republicans when accusing him of not leaving his basement.
What has favored, paradoxically, control (although not 100 percent) one of its main brands of the house: its frequent “verbal gaffes”.
“I’m a blunder machine. But, by God, what a wonderful thing compared to a guy who can’t tell the truth,” he quipped late last year when comparing himself to Trump.
One of the campaign nights of the primaries he got confused before he started talking to his wife, Jill Biden, and his sister, Valerie Biden.
But he has also been at the forefront of his party, spurring changes that now make his party proud: in 2012, he claimed he was “absolutely comfortable” with it. gay marriage, which forced Obama to accelerate his explicit support for those unions and contributed to their final legalization by the Supreme Court in 2015.
Biden is already the elected president but he will have to govern in one of the most difficult moments imaginable, with a political, economic and health crisis that devastates the country, with the Senate possibly against blocking their initiatives and with the Supreme Court with a historic conservative majority.
