Joe Biden

Joe Biden (1942 -)

Finally, Joe Biden has reached his goal: on January 20th, 2021, he has been inaugurated as the 46th President of the United States. The former Vice President thus crowned his long political career of about 50 years. The main focus of the next US President: to reconcile America and help it regain its greatness. His turbulent life proves that the tireless man from Delaware possesses the necessary strength to master the country's great challenges: 

Childhood

Joseph Robinette Biden, Jr. was born on November 20th, 1942, in Scranton, Pennsylvania. His parents were the car salesman Joseph Robinette Biden, Sr. and Catherine Eugenia Finnegan. Joe Biden grew up with his brothers James Brian and Francis W. and his sister Valerie in the middle of the working-class milieu of what today is the Rust Belt of the USA.When Joe was ten years old, the Irish-American family moved from Pennsylvania to the neighboring state of Delaware, which would remain Joe Biden's home.

Education

The first major trial in Joe Biden's life was to overcome stuttering. He mastered it with great discipline, and in 1961 he graduated from the Roman Catholic Archmere Academy of Claymont. He studied political science and history at the University of Delaware in Newark until 1965. He then joined the College of Law at Syracuse University, where he received his Juris Doctorate in 1968.From 1969, Biden worked as a lawyer in Wilmington, Delaware. 

Family & private life

In his private life, Joe Biden has experienced many ups and downs.In 1966, he married his first wife and college love Neilia Hunter, with whom he has two sons and a daughter. The first great tragedy struck Joe Biden in 1972 when his wife and daughter Naomi died in a traffic accident. From then on, Biden was a single father of his two sons, who survived the accident with serious injuries.

In 1975, Joe Biden met his second great love, the English teacher Jill Tracy Jacobs, whom he married in 1977. Their daughter Ashley was born in 1981.Joe Biden's own life was in danger at the beginning of 1988: he had to have two aneurysms removed from his brain. During the recovery process, he suffered a pulmonary embolism.Another hard stroke of fate came in 2015 when the then Vice President Biden had to cope with the death of his oldest son Beau from a brain tumor.

Senator of Delaware

Joe Biden's political career began in 1973. At the age of only 29 years, he was elected to become a senator of Delaware. He was re-elected five times and remained in office until 2009.In his role as senator, he fought above all for the middle and working classes and for restrictions on the possession of weapons. Biden changed some of his political positions during his career to more liberal values, e.g., on social security, abortion, and LGBTQ rights. In terms of foreign policy, he supported President George W. Bush in his fight against terrorism.  However, Joe Biden says he regrets his vote in the Senate for the Iraq war today. 

Presidential candidate

Joe Biden's long road to the presidency began more than 30 years ago and required a total of three attempts. Biden first presented himself as a presidential candidate for the 1988 election in June 1987 but withdrew his application after only six weeks due to accusations of plagiarism. Biden made a second attempt with the 2008 election, competing against the future president Barack Obama, among others. However, Biden could not get enough votes in the democratic pre-election process, so he dropped out of the race in January 2008.

Vice President of the United States

On August 23rd, 2008, Barack Obama presented Joe Biden as his running mate in Springfield, Illinois. The experienced politician Biden was to support Obama mainly on foreign policy issues and secure campaign success among white workers. The strategy proved to be successful - in the 2008 election, the duo Obama/Biden clearly beat their Republican opponents John McCain and Sarah Palin with 365 to 173 Electoral College votes.

Joe Biden was sworn in as the 47th Vice President of the United States on January 20th, 2009. Obama and Biden were re-elected four years later. During their two terms in office, a deep friendship developed between the two unequal men. Barack Obama always described his Vice President as sincere and dutiful. In his farewell speech, he said, “Joe, you were the first decision I made as a nominee, and it was the best.” Biden was expected to have a good chance in the 2016 presidential elections, but after his son died of cancer, he decided against running. 

President-elect

In April 2019, Joe Biden announced that he wanted to run for a third presidential election in 2020. He beat, among others, Bernie Sanders, Elisabeth Warren, and his future running mate Kamala Harris in the Democratic Preliminaries. In an unconventional election campaign overshadowed by the Corona pandemic, Joe Biden challenged the incumbent Donald Trump. After tight decisions for the Democrats in several states, Joe Biden was declared President-elect of the United States on November 7th, 2020. 

Preliminary results of the presidential election 2020:

  Popular Vote          Electoral Votes
Joseph R. Biden 78,678,763 306
Donald J. Trump 73,116,708 232

Vice President-elect Kamala Harris

The daughter of Indian and Jamaican immigrants studied political science and economics at Howard University in Washington D.C., and law at the University of California.Kamala Harris worked as an assistant to the District Attorney of Alameda County from 1990 to 1998. She then served in the San Francisco District Attorney's office and the San Francisco City Attorney's office. In November 2010, she won the election as the Attorney General of California. 

She has been representing the State of California in the United States Senate since January 2017. In the 2020 presidential election, Kamala Harris ran as a Democratic presidential candidate herself but withdrew in December 2019.On August 11th, 2020, Joe Biden presented her as his running mate. 

Kamala Harris is the third woman to run for the Vice President's office after Democrat Geraldine Ferraro in 1984 and Republican Sarah Palin in 2008 - and the first one to succeed.She will be sworn in as the first female Vice President of the United States on January 20th, 2021. 

The objectives of Joe Biden´s presidency

The next President of the United States will face many challenges. Consequently, Joe Biden has put together an ambitious program for the coming years. True to the motto "Build Back Better," he wants to build on the legacy of Barack Obama and unite America in a challenging time. This is how his plans and main concerns look like in detail: 

 

  • Coronavirus: The very first major challenge on Joe Biden's agenda is the fight against the coronavirus. In order to get the pandemic under control, Biden wants to provide free testing to everyone, make wearing a face covering mandatory, and hire 100,000 people to ensure contact tracing of the infected.
  • Jobs: To revive the economy, which was hit hard by the Corona crisis, Joe Biden mainly wants to provide loans for smaller companies and support families with financial aid. In the long run, the new President will commit himself to strengthening the production of goods "Made in America" and creating new jobs in the sector of green energy and technologies.
  • Climate change: The environment is at the center of Joe Biden's future policy, which he summarizes under the term "Green New Deal." First of all, he would like to return to the Paris Agreement. Joe Biden also plans massive investments in new technologies over the next ten years so that the USA will be emission-free by 2050.
  • Healthcare: The health care system established under President Obama, commonly known as "Obamacare," is to be revived and expanded under President Biden.
  • Equality: The racial protests that swept across the United States in the summer of 2020 led Joe Biden to promise broad economic and social programs to support minorities. A 30 billion dollar investment fund will be created for this purpose. In the area of criminal justice, measures that mitigate racial, gender, and income inequalities in the judicial system are to be integrated.
  • Immigration: As far as migration policy is concerned, Joe Biden essentially wants to undo the decisions of his predecessor Donald Trump. For example, the limitation to the number of asylum applications is to be revoked, and travel bans from several Muslim countries are to be discontinued. People who were illegally brought to the USA as children (so-called "dreamers") are to be entitled to federal student assistance.
  • Education: In the area of education, Biden supports debt relief on student loans, the expansion of free colleges, and universal access to pre-schools.
  • Foreign affairs: The President-elect has so far kept relatively secretive about how exactly America will position itself in foreign policy. He will most likely turn away from Donald Trump's isolationism and revitalize transatlantic relations, especially the NATO alliance. However, a tougher stance towards Russia and especially China is to be expected. The Chinese will most likely be held accountable for issues like unfair environmental and trade practices.

Profile Joe Biden

Wife: Dr. Jill Tracy Jacobs (1951 -), married on June 17th, 1977; Neilia Hunter (1942-1972) married from 1966-1972

Children: Joseph „Beau“ Robinette III Biden (1969-2015), Robert Hunter Biden (1970-), Naomi Christina Biden (1971-1972), Ashley Blazer Biden (1981-)

Profession: Lawyer, Politician

Party affiliation: Democrat

Presidential salary: USD 400,000 a year + USD 50,000 expenses

 

More interesting facts

 

  • Joe Biden set a record in the US elections of 2020. Around 75 million people voted for the Democrat - more than for any other presidential candidate before.

  • Joe Biden will break another record when he takes office on January 20th, 2021: he will begin his term at the age of 78 as the oldest President of the USA to date.

  • Joe Biden will be the first President since Ronald Reagan not to have graduated from an elite university.

  • Shortly before the end of his term as Vice President, on January 13th, 2017, Joe Biden received the Presidential Medal of Freedom, one of America's highest civilian awards.

  • The new First Lady, Dr. Jill Biden, received her Ph.D. in educational science in 2007 at the age of 55. While her husband was Vice President, she continued to work as a teacher.

  • Most American Presidents were fond of dogs. Joe Biden's will again take two "First Dogs," the German Shepherds Champ and Major, to the White House after it remained "dog-free" for four years under Donald Trump.

  • Nickname: Amtrak Joe (For 36 years, Joe Biden commuted every day on the Amtrak train between his home in Delaware and his workplace in Washington, D.C.)

„America, I’m honored that you have chosen me to lead our great country. The work ahead of us will be hard, but I promise you this: I will be a President for all Americans - whether you voted for me or not. I will keep the faith that you have placed in me." 

(President-elect Joe Biden after his victory on November 7th, 2020)

 

 

Photo credit: Gage Skidmore from Peoria, Arizona, CC BY-SA 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons

Sources:

https://www.bbc.com/news/election-us-2020-53575474

https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2020/us/elections/joe-biden.html

https://www.sueddeutsche.de/politik/joe-biden-und-barack-obama-die-bromance-der-o-bidens-1.3331484

https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joe_Biden

https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kamala_Harris