Joe Biden ran for the White House twice before, in 1987 and 2008.
Washington:
He has channeled personal tragedy into heartfelt compassion for everyday Americans, but President-elect Joe Biden faces the challenge of his life as he inherits a nation traumatized and haunted by his predecessor in the White House.
Biden’s victory, projected by television networks Saturday in a suspenseful election with the United States in crisis, turns the page on Donald Trump’s most divisive presidencies and rewards his call to the best angels of a deeply divided country.
But can the man who has presented himself as chief healer advance in a nation where Trump’s ideology, regardless of the president’s defeat, shows little sign of abating?
Rarely have presidential rivals diverged as much as in the 2020 race, which pitted the empathetic Democrat against the spiteful Trump, the billionaire businessman who ran as the outsider despite his four years in the Oval Office.
When the sun rose on the National Mall in Washington, the morning after a tense election night, it seemed that the hard-hitting contest could go either way.
But as the quietly confident Democrat won state after state in the days that followed, his victory slowly but inexorably took shape.
By Saturday, US networks projected that the pivotal state of Pennsylvania and the White House won.
“The work ahead of us will be tough, but I promise you this: I will be a president for all Americans,” the 46th US president-in-waiting said shortly after the networks made the call.
Now, all his work is ahead of him.
It inherits a coronavirus pandemic that shows no signs of abating and an office that believes its credibility has been shattered by “liar” Trump.
Biden ran for the White House twice before, in 1987 and 2008.
A defeat for the deeply polarizing Trump, Biden said late in the election, would mean he had been a “lousy” candidate, lowering the curtain on a prolific but ultimately unsatisfied political career.
But the “Joe of the middle class” had made it his ultimate mission in life to overthrow the Republican and, in his words, restore the “soul” of America.
And despite a muted campaign beyond recognition by Covid-19, conducted largely from home as his high-octane rival charged across the country, Biden finally showed Trump the door.
– Lasting compassion –
When he is sworn in on January 20, at age 78, Biden will be the oldest American head of state ever to be sworn in.
He arrived on the national stage at just 29 years old, with a surprise victory in the United States Senate in Delaware in 1972.
A month later, tragedy struck: his wife Neilia and their one-year-old daughter Naomi were killed in a car accident while they were Christmas shopping.
Biden’s two sons were seriously injured but survived, only for the eldest, Beau, to succumb to cancer four decades later, in 2015.
Throughout his life, Biden has spoken poignantly of his personal encounters with the tragedy, which are seen to have nurtured a capacity for genuine empathy, something Trump was unable to demonstrate even as the number of Covid-19 victims rose. to a quarter of a million.
His retail politicking skills are unmatched – he can show his million-watt smile to college students, sympathize with the unemployed machinists of Rust Belt, or give a fierce warning to his rivals.
That personable, sociable quality was constrained by the pandemic, which brought the campaign to a halt in person in March and prompted a more cautious Biden along the way.
Somewhat diminished compared to the figure he presented during his eight years as Barack Obama’s vice president, the dazzling smile remained. But Biden’s gait was more delicate and his fine white hair had thinned.
Opponents, and even some Democrats, wondered if the talkative and error-prone Biden would stumble in his long campaign against Trump.
The 74-year-old president dubbed him “Sleepy Joe” and accused him of diminished mental acuity.
In a flash of frustration over Trump’s interruptions during his first debate, he at one point told the president to “shut up.”
But mostly Biden shrugged off the attacks.
– ‘They are the future’ –
America’s longest-serving president-elect began his career on Capitol Hill as one of the youngest senators in history, spending more than three decades in the upper house before becoming a deputy for Obama.
Biden’s campaign message was based largely on his association with the still-popular Obama and his ability to do business with the many world leaders his former boss sent him to meet (“I know these guys,” he reminded the people).
His offer of moderate policy in a time of division was an ointment to an electorate exhausted by four years of scandal and chaos in the Trump White House.
But Biden balanced his main appeal with promising to take genuinely progressive action as president on climate change, racial injustice, and student debt relief.
In January, Americans may already be wondering whether the aging statesman will seek to extend his role as president of the United States beyond a first term, given his own words on the transitory nature of his candidacy.
“Look, I see myself as a bridge, not something else,” Biden told a crowd at a rally in Detroit, Michigan, in March.
He gestured to the younger Democrats who had joined him on stage, including the woman who would become his running mate, Senator Kamala Harris, 56.
“There is a whole generation of leaders who saw behind me,” he said. “They are the future of this country.”
– Historical comeback –
Biden wasn’t sure about becoming his party’s standard bearer. Despite being the darling of the Democratic establishment, some considered him too old or too centrist.
His campaign seemed headed for disaster after disappointing primary losses to the fiery Bernie Sanders earlier this year.
But Biden came back strong in the South Carolina primary thanks to the overwhelming support of African American voters, a crucial base of Democratic support.
Securing the nomination marked a stark contrast to his 1988 blackout, when he resigned in disgrace after he was caught plagiarizing a speech by British politician Neil Kinnock.
He was hardly any better in 2008, retiring after garnering less than 1 percent of the vote in the Iowa caucuses.
That year he was finally chosen as a running mate by Obama, who dubbed him “America’s happy warrior.”
As a senator for more than 30 years, Biden was known to forge unlikely alliances and, like Trump, developed a lack of fidelity to the script.
He faced a settling of scores among Democrats, including Harris, the next vice president of the United States, for working with known segregationists in the Senate and for opposing “transportation” policies in the 1970s aimed at transporting children. blacks to predominantly white schools.
He also came under fire for helping draft a 1994 crime bill that many Democrats believe led to incarcerations, disproportionately affecting African Americans. Biden recently called the push a “mistake.”
Other episodes in the Senate also threatened to spoil his presidential campaign: his 2003 vote in favor of the Iraq war and his presidency of controversial hearings in 1991 in which Anita Hill accused Supreme Court candidate Clarence Thomas of sexual harassment.
Last year he faced a storm over his own notoriously tactile approach to female voters that a man out of step with his modernizing party might suggest.
He apologized and promised to be more “aware” of women’s personal space.
– ‘Get up’ –
Biden relays the poignant details of his family stories so frequently that, despite their obvious grief, they have become part of a political brand.
The 1972 accident left their sons Beau, four, and Hunter, two, seriously injured, and Biden, 30, swore by their hospital beds.
Biden met his second wife, teacher Jill Jacobs, in 1975 and they married two years later. They have a daughter, Ashley.
Both boys recovered from their injuries and Beau followed his father into politics, becoming Delaware’s attorney general, but the Democratic rising star died of brain cancer in 2015 at age 46.
Lawyer and lobbyist Hunter Biden has had a different track record.
He received a lucrative salary as a board member of a Ukrainian gas company accused of corruption while his father was vice president.
Trump’s push for Ukraine to investigate the Bidens led to the president’s impeachment last December by the democratically controlled House of Representatives, but he was acquitted by the Republican-led Senate.
Hunter was not personally charged with any criminal offenses, but Trump would not let the problem die.
He repeatedly insisted that the Bidens were a “criminal family” who were getting rich on corruption, but that the accusations were of dubious origin and did not remain with American voters most concerned about the bread and butter campaign issues. not to mention one time in one. lifelong public health crisis.
Joseph Robinette Biden Jr was born on November 20, 1942 and raised in the town of Scranton, Pennsylvania, on the Rust Belt, in an Irish Catholic family.
His father was a car salesman, but when the city went through tough times in the 1950s and he lost his job, he moved the family to neighboring Delaware when Joe Biden was 10 years old.
“My dad always said, ‘Champ, when you get knocked down, you get up,'” says Biden.
He made Delaware his political domain. As a young man, he served as a lifeguard in a predominantly black neighborhood, an experience that he said sharpened his awareness of systemic inequalities and strengthened his political interest.
Biden studied at the University of Delaware and Syracuse University School of Law, and has expressed pride in not being a product of the elite Ivy League.
He touts his working-class roots and recalls being hampered as a child by stuttering so strong that he was cruelly nicknamed “Dash.”
But he overcame the condition, and in the election campaign he spoke about how he still advises young people who stutter.
Biden often singled out Jill, 69, as a powerful asset to his campaign, and recalled how she took care of the mother of her husband’s two children.
“She brought us back together,” Biden said.
– ‘Proud of me?’ –
“It never goes away,” Biden said of the pain that lives inside him since he lost Beau. The tragedy prevented him from launching a presidential candidacy in 2016.
Even today, he often stops to greet the firefighters, remembering that it was they who saved his children.
They also saved Biden. In 1988, firefighters rushed him to the hospital after an aneurysm.
Biden’s condition was so dire that a priest was called in to give him the last rites.
Almost every Sunday, Biden prays at St. Joseph on the Brandywine, a Catholic church in his affluent Wilmington neighborhood.
There, in the cemetery, rest his parents, his first wife and daughter, and his son Beau, under a tombstone decorated with small American flags.
In January, Biden confided in Beau and his undeniable influence: “Every morning I wake up … and think, ‘Are you proud of me?’
(This story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is automatically generated from a syndicated feed.)
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