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Followed by a Secret Service agent, Joe Biden leaves a church in Wilmington where he was attending a service. Image: keystone
Everybody here knows Joe
Joe Biden lives in Wilmington, a small town on the east coast. It is very likely that you come across Donald Trump’s competitor by chance.
Joseph Biden lives on a very feudal estate for a man who is said to have promised to destroy the idyllic American suburbs. From Barley Mill Road, a neat neighborhood street on the outskirts of Wilmington, Delaware, there is no glimpse of the presidential candidate’s million-dollar villa built in 1998: Secret Service security personnel are housed in the guesthouse at the entrance.
But Biden wouldn’t be Biden if he hadn’t talked often and happily in the past about his frankly intimate relationship with the many houses he owned during his long life. And how he thought about every detail, from the conservatory to the front garden shrubs.
“I was seduced by real estate as a kid in high school,” Biden wrote in his 2007 autobiography. His sister Valerie once said: If Joe had not succeeded as a politician, he probably would have become an architect or a landscaper. (Today, the Democrat officially owns two lots: the mansion in Greenville and a beach house in Rehoboth Beach, Delaware.)
Everyone has known it before
As protected as Biden can live with his wife Jill. Until the outbreak of the crown pandemic, the veteran senator and former vice president was constantly present at his place of residence. Almost every resident of the small town (Wilmington has just over 70,000 residents) can tell a story about a more or less chance encounter with “Joe.”
A woman says she ran into Biden in the parking lot of a furniture store when he tried to push a bulky piece of furniture into her car. Of course he offered his help, she says and laughs. One man recounts how Biden stocked up on a sandwich at a local food chain called “PureBread Deli.” And how surprised she was at how much the 77-year-old had aged.
The following anecdote is also circulating in Delaware: After a memorial service, one man tells the other that he saw a mourner in church who looked like Joe Biden. The other responds, “That was Joe Biden.” In a small state like Delaware (population: 974,000), where the phrase “everyone knows everyone” must be taken literally, it is the duty of a politician to be present in public at all times.
Plus, Biden loves getting in touch with voters, whether they’re pizza shop owners or firefighters. “That’s Joe,” says Jules Witcover, veteran journalist and author of the only critical biography of the presidential candidate.
And, of course, a politician must always work to make sure he is not forgotten. Biden is a true master of this art. The Wilmington station was named after him in 2011, a good opportunity to remind voters that Amtrak Joe, as Biden is jokingly known, was a passionate train conductor. As a senator, he traveled from Wilmington to Washington and returned more than 7,000 times.
The pool and the train station are called Biden.
A swimming pool in the small town is also called Biden. The Joseph R. Biden Jr. Aquatics Center recalls that as a young man, Joe made a small contribution to bridging the divide between black and white by signing up as a lifeguard at a pool frequented primarily by African Americans.
Biden has critics too, even in Wilmington. For example, a Republican who worked as an Amtrak driver years ago and is now trying to be nominated as a candidate for the national House of Representatives says: Biden is a decent man, but he is under the control of the left wing of the Democrats.
If you want to hear higher pitches, you must grant critics anonymity. Then they say that Biden only survived politically because the East Coast state is small and Biden masters the “Delaware Road,” as it is called here – the art of not overly alienating the political opponent. so as not to jeopardize his own career. Because in Delaware, as often happens when big politics takes place on a small stage, Democrats and Republicans play the game. Ultimately, Wilmington also benefited from this.
