[classic music] Joseph Robinette Biden Jr. (born November
20, 1942) is an American politician who served as the 47th vice president of
the United States from 2009 to 2017. Biden also represented Delaware in the
U.S. Senate from 1973 to 2009. A member of the Democratic Party, Biden is a
candidate for President in the 2020 election. Biden was born in Scranton, Pennsylvania,
and lived there for ten years before moving with his family to Delaware. He became a lawyer in 1969 and was elected to the Ne
w Castle County Council in 1970. He was first elected to the U.S. Senate in 1972, when he became the sixth-youngest
senator in American history. Biden was re-elected six times and was the
fourth most senior senator when he resigned to assume the vice presidency in 2009. Biden was a long-time member
and former chairman of the Foreign Relations Committee. He opposed the Gulf War in 1991, but advocated U.S. and NATO intervention in the
Bosnian War in 1994 and 1995. He voted in favor of the resoluti
on authorizing
the Iraq War in 2002 but opposed the surge of U.S. troops in 2007. He has also served as chairman of the Senate
Judiciary Committee, dealing with issues related [classic music] to drug policy, crime
prevention, and civil liberties. Biden led the efforts to pass the Violent
Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act, and the Violence Against Women Act. He also chaired the Judiciary Committee during
the contentious U.S. Supreme Court nominations of Robert Bork and Clarence Thomas. Biden
unsuccessfully sought the Democratic
presidential nomination in 1988 and in 2008. In 2008, Biden was the running mate of
Democratic presidential nominee Barack Obama. As vice president, Biden oversaw infrastructure
spending aimed at counteracting the Great Recession and helped formulate U.S. policy toward Iraq
through the withdrawal of U.S. troops in 2011. His ability to negotiate with congressional
Republicans helped the Obama administration pass legislation such as the Tax Relief, Unemployment
Insurance Reauthorization, and
Job Creation Act of 2010, which resolved a taxation deadlock; the Budget Control Act of 2011, which resolved
that year's debt ceiling crisis; and the American Taxpayer Relief Act of 2012, which addressed the impending fiscal cliff. Obama and Biden were re-elected in 2012. In October 2015, after months of speculation,
Biden announced he would not seek the presidency in the 2016 elections. [classic music] In January 2017, Obama awarded Biden the
Presidential Medal o
f Freedom with distinction. After completing his second term as vice president,
Biden joined the faculty of the University of Pennsylvania, where he was named the Benjamin Franklin
Professor of Presidential Practice. He announced his 2020 run
for president on April 25, 2019. Biden was born on November 20, 1942 at St.
Mary's Hospital in Scranton, Pennsylvania, to Catherine Eugenia Biden
and Joseph Robinette Biden Sr. He was the first of four siblings in a Catholic
family, with a sister and two br
others. His mother was of Irish descent, with roots
variously attributed to County Louth or County Londonderry. His paternal grandparents, Mary Elizabeth
(Robinette) and Joseph H. Biden, an oil businessman from Baltimore, Maryland, were of
English, French, and Irish ancestry. His paternal third great-grandfather, William
Biden, was born in Sussex, England, and immigrated to the United States. His maternal great-grandfather, Edward Francis
Blewitt, was a member of the Pennsylvania State Senate. B
iden's father had been wealthy earlier in his
life but suffered several financial setbacks by the time his son was born. For several years, the family had to live with Biden's maternal grandparents, the Finnegans. When the Scranton area fell into economic
decline during the 1950s, Biden's father could not find sustained work. In 1953, the Biden family moved into an apartment
in Claymont, Delaware, where they lived for several years before again moving
to a house in Wilmington, Delaware. Joe Bide
n Sr. became a successful used car
salesman, and the family's circumstances were middle class. Biden attended the Archmere Academy in Claymont
where he was a standout halfback/ wide receiver on the high school football team; he helped lead a perennially losing team
to an undefeated season in his senior year. He played on the baseball team as well. During these years, he participated in an
anti-segregation sit-in at a Wilmington theatre. Academically, he was an above-average student,
was consider
ed a natural leader among the students, and was elected class president
during his junior and senior years. He graduated in 1961. He earned his bachelor's in 1965 from the
University of Delaware, with a double major in history and political science, graduating
with a class rank of 506 out of 688. His classmates were impressed by his cramming
abilities, and he played halfback with the Blue Hens freshman football team. In 1964, while on spring break in the Bahamas,
he met and began dating Neilia H
unter, who was from an affluent background in Skaneateles,
New York, and attended Syracuse University. He told her that he aimed to become a
senator by the age of 30 and then President. He dropped a junior year plan to play for the
varsity football team as a defensive back, enabling him to spend more
time visiting out of state with her. He then entered Syracuse University College
of Law, receiving a half scholarship based on financial need with some additional
assistance based on academics. By h
is own description, he found law school
to be "the biggest bore in the world" and pulled many all-nighters to get by. During his first year there, he was accused of having plagiarized five of 15 pages of a law review article. Biden said it was inadvertent due to his
not knowing the proper rules of citation, and he was permitted to retake the course after
receiving an "F" grade, which was subsequently [classic music] dropped from his record. This incident would later attract attention
when furthe
r plagiarism accusations emerged in 1987. He received his Juris Doctor in 1968,
graduating 76th of 85 in his class. Biden was admitted to the Delaware bar in 1969. Biden received student draft deferments during
this period, at the peak of the Vietnam War, and in 1968, he was reclassified by the Selective Service
System as not available for service due to having had asthma as a teenager. He never took part in anti-war demonstrations,
later saying that at the time he was preoccupied with marriage
and law school, and
"wore sports coats... not tie-dyed" Negative impressions of drinking alcohol in
the Biden and Finnegan families and in the neighborhood led to Biden becoming a teetotaler. He suffered from stuttering through much
of his childhood and into his twenties, and says he overcame it by spending many
hours reciting poetry in front of a mirror. On August 27, 1966, while Biden was still
a law student, he married Neilia Hunter. They overcame her parents' initial reluctance
for her to we
d a Roman Catholic, and the ceremony was held in a Catholic church in Skaneateles. They had three children, Joseph R. "Beau"
Biden III in 1969, Robert Hunter in 1970, and Naomi Christina in 1971. During 1968, Biden clerked for six months
at a Wilmington law firm headed by prominent local Republican William Prickett and, as he later said, "thought of myself as a Republican". He disliked the conservative racial politics
of incumbent Democratic Governor of Delaware Charles L. Terry and supported
a
more liberal Republican, Russell W. Peterson, who defeated Terry in 1968. The local Republicans tried to recruit him, but
he resisted due to his distaste for Republican presidential candidate Richard Nixon,
and registered as an Independent instead. In 1969, Biden resumed practicing law in Wilmington,
first as a public defender and then at a firm headed by Sid Balick, a locally active Democrat. Balick named him to the Democratic Forum,
a group trying to reform and revitalize the state party, and
Biden switched
his registration to Democrat. He also started his own firm, Biden and Walsh. Corporate law, however, did not appeal
to him and criminal law did not pay well. He supplemented his income by managing properties. Later in 1969, Biden ran as a Democrat for
the New Castle County Council on a liberal platform that included support for
public housing in the suburban area. [applause] He won by a solid, two-thousand vote margin
in the usually Republican district and in a bad year for Democr
ats in the state. Even before taking his seat,
he was already talking about running for the U.S. Senate in a couple of years. He served on the County Council from 1970 to
1972 while continuing his private law practice. Biden represented the 4th
district on the county council. Among issues he addressed on the council was his opposition to large highway
projects that might disrupt Wilmington neighborhoods,
including those related to Interstate 95. Biden's entry into the 1972 U.S. Senate election
i
n Delaware presented a unique circumstance. Longtime Delaware political figure and
Republican incumbent Senator J. Caleb Boggs was considering retirement, which would likely have left U.S. Representative
Pete du Pont and Wilmington Mayor Harry G. Haskell Jr. in a divisive primary fight. To avoid that, U.S. President Richard Nixon
helped convince Boggs to run again with full party support. No other Democrat wanted to run against Boggs. Biden's campaign had virtually no
money and was given no chan
ce of winning. It was managed by his sister Valerie Biden
Owens (who would go on to manage his future (campaigns) and staffed by other family members, and relied upon handed-out newsprint position
papers and meeting voters face-to-face; the small size of the state and lack of a
major media market made the approach feasible. He did receive some assistance from the AFL–CIO
and Democratic pollster Patrick Caddell. His campaign issues focused on withdrawal
from Vietnam, the environment, civil rights
, mass transit, more equitable taxation, health care, the
public's dissatisfaction with politics-as-usual, and "change". During the summer, he trailed by almost 30
percentage points, but his energy level, his attractive young family, and his ability to connect with voters' emotions
gave the surging Biden an advantage over the ready-to-retire Boggs. He won the November 7, 1972 election
in an upset by a margin of 3,162 votes. On December 18, 1972, a few weeks after the
election, Biden's wife and o
ne-year-old daughter Naomi were killed in an automobile
accident while Christmas shopping in Hockessin, Delaware. Neilia Biden's station wagon was hit by
a tractor-trailer as she pulled out from an intersection; the truck driver was cleared of any wrongdoing. Biden's sons Beau and Hunter survived the
accident and were taken to the hospital in fair condition, Beau with a broken leg and other wounds, and
Hunter with a minor skull fracture and other head injuries. Doctors soon said both would make
full recoveries. Biden considered resigning to care for them,
but was persuaded not to by Senate Majority Leader Mike Mansfield. Subsequent to the accident, Biden commented
that the truck driver had been drinking alcohol before the collision, but these allegations were denied by the driver's
family and were never substantiated by the police. Biden was sworn into office on January 5,
1973, by Francis R. Valeo, the Secretary of the Senate in a small chapel at the Delaware
Division of the Wilmingto
n Medical Center. Beau was wheeled in with his leg still in traction; Hunter, who had already been released, was also
there, as were other members of the extended [classic music] family. Witnesses and television cameras were also
present and the event received national attention. At age 30 (the minimum age required to hold
the office), Biden became the sixth youngest senator in U.S. history, and one of only 18 senators who took
office before reaching the age of 31. But the accident left him fill
ed with both
anger and religious doubt: "I liked to walk" [around seedy neighborhoods] at night when I
thought there was a better chance of finding a fight... I had not known I was capable of such rage... I felt God had played a horrible trick on me.” To be at home every day for his young sons, Biden began the practice of commuting every
day by Amtrak train for 90 minutes each way from his home in the Wilmington
suburbs to Washington, D.C., which he continued to do
throughout his Senate career.
In the aftermath of the
accident, he had trouble focusing on work and appeared to just go
through the motions of being a senator. In his memoirs, Biden notes that staffers
were taking bets on how long he would last. A single father for five years, he left standing
orders that he be interrupted in the Senate at any time if his sons called. In remembrance of his wife and daughter, Biden
does not work on December 18, the anniversary of the accident. Biden's elder son, Beau, became Delaware Attorney
General and an Army Judge Advocate who served in Iraq; his younger son, Hunter,
became a Washington attorney and lobbyist. On May 30, 2015, Beau died at the age of 46
after a two-year battle with brain cancer. At the time of his death, Beau had been widely
seen as the frontrunner to be the Democratic nominee for Governor of Delaware in 2016. In 1975, Biden met Jill Tracy Jacobs, who
grew up in Willow Grove, Pennsylvania, and would become a teacher in Delaware. They had met on a blind date
arran
ged by Biden's brother, although it turned out that Biden had already
noticed a photograph of her in an advertisement for a local park in Wilmington, Delaware. Biden would credit her with renewing
his interest in both politics and life. On June 17, 1977, Biden and Jacobs were married
by a Catholic priest at the Chapel at the United Nations in New York. Jill Biden has a bachelor's degree from the
University of Delaware; two master's degrees, one from West Chester University
and the other from Vil
lanova University; and a doctorate in education
from the University of Delaware. They have one daughter together, Ashley Blazer
(born 1981), who became a social worker and staffer at the Delaware Department of Services
for Children, Youth, and Their Families. Biden and his wife are Roman Catholics and
regularly attend Mass at St. Joseph's on the Brandywine in Greenville, Delaware. During his first years in the Senate, Biden
focused on legislation regarding consumer protection and environmental i
ssues and called for greater
accountability on the part of government. In mid-1974, freshman Senator Biden was named
one of the 200 Faces for the Future by Time magazine, in a profile that mentioned what had happened to his family and characterized Biden as
"self-confident" and "compulsively ambitious". In 1974, Biden was one of the Senate's leading
opponents of desegregation busing, a then frequently court-ordered practice
of racially integrating schools. Biden said that he supported the aim of
school
desegregation, but not the practice of busing, which his white constituents bitterly opposed. Such opposition would later lead his party to
mostly abandon school desegregation policies. Biden became ranking minority member of the
U.S. Senate Committee on the Judiciary in 1981. In 1984, he was Democratic floor manager for
the successful passage of the Comprehensive Crime Control Act. Over time, the tough-on-crime provisions of
the legislation became controversial on the left and among cri
minal justice reform proponents, and in 2019, Biden characterized his role in
passing the legislation as a "big mistake". Biden and his supporters praised him for modifying
some of the Act's worst provisions, and it was his most important legislative
accomplishment at that point in time. He first considered running for president in
that year, after he gained notice for giving speeches to party audiences that simultaneously
scolded and encouraged Democrats. Regarding foreign policy, during his fi
rst
decade in the Senate, Biden focused on arms control issues. In response to the refusal of the U.S. Congress to ratify the SALT II Treaty signed in 1979 by
Soviet leader Leonid Brezhnev and President [classic music] Jimmy Carter, he took the initiative to meet the Soviet Foreign Minister Andrei Gromyko, educated him
about American concerns and interests, and secured several changes to address
objections of the Foreign Relations Committee. When the Reagan administration
wanted to interpret the
1972 SALT I Treaty loosely in order to allow the
Strategic Defense Initiative to proceed, Biden argued for strict
adherence to the treaty's terms. He clashed again with the Reagan administration
in 1986 over economic sanctions against South Africa; he received considerable
attention when he excoriated Secretary of State George
P. Shultz at a Senate hearing because of the administration's support of
that country, which continued to practice the apartheid system. Biden ran for the 1988 Democratic
presidential
nomination, formally declaring his candidacy at the Wilmington train station on June 9, 1987. He was attempting to become the
youngest president since John F. Kennedy. When the campaign began, he was considered
a potentially strong candidate because of his moderate image, his
speaking ability on the stump, his appeal to Baby Boomers, his high-profile
position as chair of the Senate Judiciary Committee at the upcoming Robert Bork Supreme
Court nomination hearings, and his fundraisin
g appeal. He raised $1.7 million in the first quarter
of 1987, more than any other candidate. By August 1987, Biden's campaign, whose
messaging was confused due to staff rivalries, had begun to lag behind those of Michael Dukakis
and Dick Gephardt, although he had still raised more funds than all candidates but Dukakis, and was seeing an upturn in Iowa polls. In September 1987, the campaign ran into trouble
when he was accused of plagiarizing a speech that had been made earlier that year by Neil
Kinnock, leader of the British Labour Party. Kinnock's speech included the lines: Why am
I the first Kinnock in a thousand generations to be able to get to university? [Then pointing to his wife in the audience]
Why is Glenys the first woman in her family in a thousand generations
to be able to get to university? Was it because all our predecessors were thick? While Biden's speech included the lines: I started thinking as I was coming over here,
why is it that Joe Biden is the first in his fami
ly ever to go to a university? [Then pointing to his wife in the audience]
Why is it that my wife who is sitting out there in the audience is the first
in her family to ever go to college? Is it because our fathers
and mothers were not bright? Is it because I'm the first Biden in a thousand
generations to get a college and a graduate degree that I was smarter than the rest? Biden had in fact cited Kinnock as the source
for the formulation on previous occasions. But he made no reference to the or
iginal source
at the August 23 Democratic debate at the Iowa State Fair being reported on, nor in an August 26 interview for
the National Education Association. Moreover, while political speeches often
appropriate ideas and language from each other, Biden's use came under more scrutiny because
he fabricated aspects of his own family's background in order to match Kinnock's. Biden was soon found to have earlier that
year lifted passages from a 1967 speech by Robert F. Kennedy (for which his aides
took the blame), and a short phrase from the 1961
inaugural address of John F. Kennedy; and in two prior years to have done the same
with a 1976 passage from Hubert H. Humphrey. A few days later, Biden's plagiarism
incident in law school came to public light. Video was also released showing that when
earlier questioned by a New Hampshire resident about his grades in law school, he had stated that he had graduated in the
"top half" of his class, that he had attended law school on a full scholars
hip, and that he had received three degrees in
college, each of which was untrue or exaggerations of his actual record. Advisers and reporters pointed out that he
falsely claimed to have marched in the Civil Rights Movement. The Kinnock and school revelations were magnified
by the limited amount of other news about the nomination race at the time, when most of the public were not yet
paying attention to any of the campaigns; Biden thus fell into what The Washington Post
writer Paul Taylor descri
bed as that year's trend, a "trial by media ordeal". He lacked a strong demographic or political
group of support to help him survive the crisis. [rock music] He withdrew from the nomination race on September
23, 1987, saying his candidacy had been overrun by "the exaggerated shadow" of his past mistakes. After Biden withdrew from the race, it was
revealed that the Dukakis campaign had secretly made a video highlighting the Biden–Kinnock
comparison and distributed it to news outlets. Later in 19
87, the Delaware Supreme Court's
Board of Professional Responsibility cleared [soft music] Biden of the law school plagiarism charges
regarding his standing as a lawyer, saying Biden had "not violated any rules". In February 1988, after suffering from several
episodes of increasingly severe neck pain, Biden was taken by long-distance
ambulance to Walter Reed Army Medical Center and given lifesaving surgery to correct
an intracranial berry aneurysm that had begun leaking; the situation was seriou
s enough
that a priest had administered last rites at the hospital. While recuperating, he suffered
a pulmonary embolism, which represented a major complication. Another operation to repair a second aneurysm,
which had caused no symptoms but was also at risk from bursting, was performed in May 1988. The hospitalization and recovery kept Biden
from his duties in the U.S. Senate for seven months. Biden has had no recurrences
or effects from the aneurysms since then. In retrospect, Biden's family c
ame to believe
that the early end to his presidential campaign had been a blessing in disguise, for had he still been campaigning in
the midst of the primaries in early 1988, he might well have not have stopped to seek
medical attention and the condition might have become unsurvivable. Biden was a long-time member of the
U.S. Senate Committee on the Judiciary. He chaired it from 1987 until 1995 and he
served as ranking minority member on it from 1981 until 1987 and again from 1995 until 1997. Wh
ile chairman, Biden presided over two of the
most contentious U.S. Supreme Court confirmation hearings in history, those for Robert
Bork in 1987 and Clarence Thomas in 1991. In the Bork hearings, he stated his opposition
to Bork soon after the nomination, reversing an approval in an interview of a hypothetical Bork nomination he had made
the previous year and angering conservatives who thought he could not conduct
the hearings dispassionately. At the close, he won praise for conducting
the proce
edings fairly and with good humor and courage, as his 1988 presidential campaign collapsed
in the middle of the hearings. Rejecting some of the less intellectually
honest arguments that other Bork opponents were making, Biden framed his discussion around the belief
that the U.S. Constitution provides rights to liberty and privacy that extend beyond
those explicitly enumerated in the text, and that Bork's strong originalism was
ideologically incompatible with that view. Bork's nomination was reje
cted in the committee
by a 9–5 vote, and then rejected in the full Senate by a 58–42 margin. Biden was a long-time member of the
U.S. Senate Committee on Foreign Relations. In 1997, he became the ranking minority member
and chaired the committee in January 2001 and from June 2001 through 2003. When Democrats re-took control of the Senate
following the 2006 elections, Biden again assumed the top spot on the committee in 2007. Biden was generally a liberal
internationalist in foreign policy. He co
llaborated effectively with important
Republican Senate figures such as Richard Lugar and Jesse Helms and sometimes
went against elements of his own party. Biden was also cochairman of the
NATO Observer Group in the Senate. A partial list covering this time showed Biden
meeting with some 150 leaders from nearly 60 countries and international organizations. Biden held frequent hearings as chairman of the
committee, as well as holding many subcommittee hearings during the three times he chaired
th
e Subcommittee on European Affairs. Biden was a familiar figure to his Delaware
constituency, by virtue of his daily train commuting from there, and generally
sought to attend to state needs. Biden was a strong supporter of
increased Amtrak funding and rail security; he hosted barbecues and an annual Christmas
dinner for the Amtrak crews, and they would sometimes hold the last train of the
night a few minutes so he could catch it. He earned the nickname "Amtrak Joe" as a result
(and in 2011, Amt
rak's Wilmington Station was named the Joseph R. Biden Jr. Railroad Station, (in honor of the over 7,000 trips he made from there). He was an advocate for Delaware military
installations, including Dover Air Force Base and New Castle Air National Guard Base. Following his initial election in 1972, Biden
was re-elected to six additional terms, in the elections of 1978, 1984, 1990, 1996, 2002,
and 2008, usually getting about 60 percent of the vote. He did not face strong opposition; Pete du
Pont,
then governor, chose not to run against him in 1984. Biden spent 28 years as a junior senator due
to the two-year seniority of his Republican colleague William V. Roth Jr. After Roth was defeated for re-election by
Tom Carper in 2000, Biden became Delaware's senior senator. He then became the longest-serving senator
in Delaware history and, as of 2018, was the 18th longest serving senator in
the history of the United States. In May 1999, Biden became the
youngest senator to cast 10,000 votes. Bi
den had thought about running for president
again ever since his failed 1988 bid. Biden declared his candidacy for President
on January 31, 2007, after having discussed running for months prior. Biden made a formal announcement to Tim Russert
on Meet the Press, stating he would "be the best Biden I can be". In January 2006, Delaware newspaper columnist
Harry F. Themal wrote that Biden "occupies the sensible center of the Democratic Party". Themal concludes that this is the position
Biden desires
, and that in a campaign "he plans to stress the dangers to the
security of the average American, not just from the terrorist threat, but from
the lack of health assistance, crime, and energy dependence on unstable parts of the world". Overall, Biden had difficulty raising funds,
struggled to draw people to his rallies, and failed to gain traction against the
high-profile candidacies of Obama and Senator Hillary Clinton; he never rose above single
digits in the national polls of the Democratic c
andidates. In the initial contest on January
3, 2008, Biden placed fifth in the Iowa caucuses, garnering slightly less
than one percent of the state delegates. Biden withdrew from the race that evening,
saying "There is nothing sad about tonight... I feel no regret." Despite the lack of success, Biden's stature
in the political world rose as the result of his 2008 campaign. In particular, it changed the
relationship between Biden and [uplifting music] Obama. Although the two had served together
on the
Senate Foreign Relations Committee, they had not been close, with Biden having resented Obama's quick rise to political
stardom, and Obama having viewed Biden as garrulous and patronizing. Now, having gotten to know each other during
2007, Obama appreciated Biden's campaigning style and appeal to working class voters, and Biden was convinced
that Obama was "the real deal". Since shortly following Biden's withdrawal
from the presidential race, Obama had been privately telling Biden that he
was interested in finding an important place
for him in a possible Obama administration. Biden declined Obama's first request to vet
him for the vice presidential slot, fearing the vice presidency would represent a loss in status and voice
from his Senate position, but subsequently changed his mind. In a June 22, 2008, interview on NBC's Meet
the Press, Biden confirmed that, although he was not actively seeking a spot on the ticket, he would accept the
vice presidential nomination if offered. I
n early August, Obama and
Biden met in secret to discuss a possible vice-presidential relationship, and
the two developed a strong personal rapport. On August 22, 2008, Barack Obama announced that Biden would be his running mate. The New York Times reported that the strategy
behind the choice reflected a desire to fill out the ticket with someone who has foreign policy and national security
experience—and not to help the ticket win a swing state or to emphasize Obama's "change" message. Other ob
servers pointed out Biden's appeal
to middle class and blue-collar voters, as well as his willingness to aggressively challenge Republican nominee John
McCain in a way that Obama seemed uncomfortable doing at times. In accepting Obama's offer, Biden ruled out to
him the possibility of running for president again in 2016 (although comments by Biden in subsequent years seemed
to back off that stance, with Biden not wanting (to diminish his political power by
appearing uninterested in advancement).
[classic music] Biden was officially nominated for vice president
on August 27 by voice vote at the 2008 Democratic National Convention in Denver, Colorado. After his selection as a vice presidential
candidate, Biden was criticized by his own Roman Catholic Diocese of Wilmington Bishop Michael
Saltarelli for not opposing abortion. The diocese confirmed that even if elected
vice president, Biden would not be allowed to speak at Catholic schools. Biden was soon barred from receiving Holy
Communio
n by the bishop of his original hometown of Scranton, Pennsylvania, because
of his support for abortion rights; however, Biden did continue to receive
Communion at his local Delaware parish. Scranton became a flash point in the competition
for swing state Catholic voters between the Democratic campaign and liberal Catholic groups, who stressed that other social issues should
be considered as much or more than abortion, and many bishops and conservative Catholics, who
maintained abortion was para
mount. Biden said he believed that life began at
conception but that he would not impose his personal religious views on
others. Bishop Saltarelli had previously stated regarding stances
similar to Biden's: "No one today" would accept this statement from any
public servant: 'I am personally opposed to human slavery and racism but will not impose
my personal conviction in the legislative arena.' Likewise, none of us should accept this statement
from any public servant: 'I am personally opposed to
abortion but will not impose my
personal conviction in the legislative arena.' " On November 4, 2008, Biden was elected Vice
President of the United States as Obama's running mate. Soon after the election, he was appointed
chairman of President-elect Obama's transition team. During the transition phase of the Obama administration, Biden
said he was in daily meetings with Obama and that McCain was still his friend. The U.S. Secret Service codename given to
Biden is "Celtic", referencing his Iris
h roots. In October 2010, Biden stated that Obama had
asked him to remain as his running mate for the 2012 presidential election. With Obama's popularity on the decline, however, in late 2011 White House Chief of Staff William M. Daley conducted some secret polling and focus group
research into the idea of Secretary of State Clinton replacing Biden on the ticket. The notion was dropped when the results showed
no appreciable improvement for Obama, and White House officials later said that
Obama h
ad never entertained the idea. Biden's May 2012 statement that he was "absolutely
comfortable" with same-sex marriage gained considerable public attention in comparison
to President Obama's [classic music] position, which had been described as "evolving". Biden made his statement without administration
consent, and Obama and his aides were quite irked, since Obama had planned to shift position
several months later, in the build-up to the party convention, and since Biden had previously counseled
the president to
avoid the issue lest key Catholic voters be offended. Gay rights advocates seized
upon the Biden stance, and within days, Obama announced
that he too supported same- sex marriage, an action in part
forced by Biden's unexpected remarks. Biden apologized to Obama in private for having
spoken out, while Obama acknowledged publicly it had been done from the heart. The incident showed that Biden still struggled
at times with message discipline; as Time wrote, "everyone knows [that]
Biden's greatest
strength is also his greatest weakness." Relations were also strained between
the campaigns when Biden appeared to use his to bolster fundraising contacts for a possible run on his own in the 2016 presidential
election, and the vice president ended up being excluded from Obama
campaign strategy meetings. On November 6, 2012, the president and vice
president were elected to second terms. The Obama–Biden ticket won 332 Electoral
College votes to Romney–Ryan's 206 and had a 51–47 p
ercent edge in the nationwide popular vote. In December 2012, Biden was named by Obama
to head the Gun Violence Task Force, created to address the causes of gun violence in the United
States in the aftermath of the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting. Later that month, during the final days before
the country fell off the "fiscal cliff", Biden's relationship with McConnell once more
proved important as the two negotiated a deal that led to the American Taxpayer Relief Act of
2012 being passed
at the start of 2013. It made permanent much of the Bush tax cuts
but raised rates on upper income levels. By 2015, a series of swearings-in and other
events where Biden placed his hands on women and girls and talked closely to them had attracted
the attention of both the press and social media. In one case, a senator issued a statement
afterward saying about his daughter, "No", she doesn't think the vice president is creepy.” On January 17, 2015, Secret Service agents
heard shots were fired as
a vehicle drove near Biden's Delaware residence at 8:28 p.m. outside the security perimeter,
but the vice president and his wife Jill were not home. A vehicle was observed by an agent speeding away. During much of his second term, Biden was
said to be preparing for a possible bid for the 2016 Democratic presidential nomination. At age 74 on Inauguration Day in January 2017,
he would have been the oldest president on [classic music] inauguration in history. With his family, many friends, and dono
rs
encouraging him in mid-2015 to enter the race, and with Hillary Clinton's favorability
ratings in decline at that time, Biden was reported to again be seriously consider
-ing the prospect and a "Draft Biden 2016" PAC was established. As of September 11, 2015, Biden was
still uncertain whether or not to run. Biden cited the recent death of his son being a large drain on his emotional energy, and that
"nobody has a right... to seek that office unless they're willing to give it 110% of who they
are". On October 21, speaking from a podium in the
Rose Garden with his wife and President Obama by his side, Biden announced his decision not to enter the race for the Democratic presidential
nomination in the 2016 election. In January 2016, Biden affirmed that not running
was the right decision, but admitted to regretting not running for President "every day." As of the end of January 2016, neither Biden
nor President Barack Obama had endorsed any candidate in the 2016 presidential election. B
iden did miss his annual Thanksgiving tradition
of going to Nantucket, opting instead to travel abroad and meet with several European leaders. He took time to meet with Martin O'Malley,
having previously met with Bernie Sanders, both 2016 candidates. Neither of these meetings was considered an
endorsement, as Biden had said that he would meet with any candidate who asked. In 2017, Biden was named the Benjamin Franklin
Presidential Practice professor at the University of Pennsylvania, where he in
tended to focus on foreign policy, diplomacy,
and national security while leading the Penn Biden Center for Diplomacy and Global Engagement. He also wanted to pursue his "cancer moonshot"
agenda, calling the fight against cancer "the "only bipartisan thing left in America" in March 2017. During a tour of the U.S. Senate with reporters
before leaving office, on December 5, 2016, Biden refused to rule out a bid for the presidency
in the 2020 presidential election, after leaving office as Vice Pres
ident. If he were to run in 2020, Biden would be 77
years old on election day and 78 on inauguration day in 2021. He reasserted his ambivalence about running
on an appearance of The Late Show with Stephen Colbert on December 7, in which he stated "never say never"
about running for President in 2020, while also acknowledging that he did not see
a scenario in which he would run for office again. He seemingly announced on January 13, 2017,
exactly one week prior to the expiration of his vice presi
dential term, that he would not run. He then appeared to backtrack four days later,
on January 17, stating "I'll run if I can walk." A political action committee known as Time
for Biden was formed in January 2018, seeking Biden's entry into the race. Between 2016 and 2019, Biden was mentioned by
various media outlets as a potential candidate. He told a forum held in Bogota, Colombia, on
July 17, 2018, that he would decide whether or not to formally declare as
a candidate by January 2019. On Febr
uary 4, 2019, with no decision having
been forthcoming from Biden, Edward-Isaac Dovere of The Atlantic wrote that Biden was "very close to saying
yes" but that some close to him are worried he would have a last-minute
change of heart, as he did in 2016. [classic music] Dovere reported that Biden was concerned about
the effect another presidential run could have on his family and reputation, as well as fundraising struggles
and perceptions about his age and relative centrism, compared to other
de
clared and potential candidates. Conversely, his "sense of duty," offense at
the Trump presidency, the lack of foreign policy experience amongst other Democratic hopefuls and his desire to foster "bridge-building progressivism" in the Party,
were said to be factors prompting him to run. In March 2019, he indicated he may run, and
ultimately launched his campaign on April 25, 2019. In May 2019, Biden chose Philadelphia to be his
2020 U.S. presidential campaign headquarters. While at a fundraiser
on June 18, 2019, Biden
said that one of his greatest strengths was "bringing people together" and pointed to his relationships with Senators James Eastland and Herman Talmadge,
two segregationists as examples. While imitating a Southern drawl, Biden remarked
"I was in a caucus with James O. Eastland." He never called me 'boy, ' he always called me ‘son.'” New Jersey Senator Cory Booker was one of
many Democrats to criticize Biden for the remarks, issuing a statement that said "You
don't joke ab
out calling black men 'boys.' Men like James O. Eastland used words like
that, and the racist policies that accompanied them, to perpetuate white supremacy and strip
black Americans of our very humanity". During the first Democratic presidential debate,
Kamala Harris criticized Biden for his comments regarding his past work with segregationist
Senators and his past opposition to desegregation busing that allowed black
children like her to attend integrated schools. Biden was widely criticized fo
r his debate
performance and support for him dropped 10 points. President Trump defended Biden, saying Harris
was given "too much credit" for her debate with Biden. There have been multiple photographs and videos
of Biden engaged in what commentators considered to be inappropriate proximity to women and
children, including kissing and or touching. Biden has described himself as a "tactile
politician" and admitted that this behavior has caused trouble for him in the past. An image of Biden in clo
se proximity to Stephanie
Carter during her husband's swearing in as Secretary of Defense in 2015 resulted in a
mocking epithet that was widely repeated. Carter defended Biden's depicted
behavior in a 2019 interview. In March 2019, former Nevada assemblywoman
Lucy Flores alleged that Biden kissed her without her consent at a 2014
campaign rally in Las Vegas. In a New York magazine op-ed for The Cut,
Flores wrote that Biden had walked up behind her, put his hands on her shoulders, smelled
her hai
r, and kissed the back of her head. Adding that the way he touched her was "an
intimate way reserved for close friends, family, or romantic partners – and I felt
powerless to do anything about it." In an interview with HuffPost, Flores stated she
believed Biden's behavior to be disqualifying for a 2020 presidential run. Biden's spokesman stated that Biden
did not recall the behavior described. Two days after Flores, Amy Lappos, a former
congressional aide to Jim Himes, said Biden crossed a line
of decency and respect when he touched her in a non-sexual,
but inappropriate way by holding her head to rub noses with her at a political
fundraiser in Greenwich in 2009. The next day, two additional women came forward
with allegations of inappropriate conduct. [classic music] One woman said that Biden
placed his hand on her thigh, and the other said he ran his hand
from her shoulder down her back. By early April 2019, a total of seven women
had made allegations of inappropriate physical contac
t regarding Biden. At a conference on April 5, Biden apologized for not understanding how individuals would react to
his actions, but stated that his intentions were honorable; he went on to say that he was not sorry for
anything that he had ever done, which led critics to accuse him of sending a mixed message. He also proclaimed —with each public embrace
he gave during the event—that he had received permission for it. Some critics interpreted this as Biden jokingly
deflecting criticism, while o
ther observers considered his change in tone
responsive to the criticisms received.
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