In these presidential elections, Democrat Joe Biden will receive the final evaluation of his life, which he devoted entirely to politics, writes Hina.
After family tragedies, two failed attempts to win the White House and an election campaign disrupted by the pandemic, the political veteran hopes that, at the age of 77, he has convinced Americans that he is the person who will unite them after Donald Trump.
"We can end the rule of a president who from the beginning wants to divide us, tear us apart. We can end the rule of a president who did not know how to protect the country, who fanned the flames of hatred," said the former US vice president in the last hours of the campaign.
To the very end, Biden remains true to the message he emphasized when announcing his candidacy in April of last year - "We are fighting for the soul of America."
In a recent moment of his characteristic candor, he said that losing to the unpopular Republican billionaire would mean he was a "lousy candidate."
It would certainly mean the end of his career at the national level, which he began triumphantly at the age of 29, but did not enjoy for long due to an unimaginable family tragedy.
Family tragedy and empathy as the strongest trump card
In November 1972, he celebrated his election as a US senator, as the fifth youngest in history, surrounded by his overjoyed family. A month later, his wife and daughter were killed in a car accident, while his two sons were injured.
That tragedy, as well as the death of his eldest son in 2015, increased his empathy. He made compassion his trademark.
In 2020, he carries himself as proudly as he did at the beginning of his career and performs with just as much passion.
But the hardened political wolf no longer looks as good in his perfectly tailored suits as he did in his prime when he was Barack Obama's vice president. He looks frail and bald.
He is prone to gaffes and losing control and some, even among his supporters, feared he would stumble and collapse during the long battle with Donald Trump, 74.
The pandemic, which suddenly paralyzed the election campaign in March, took away one of his strongest assets - direct contact with voters.
Although he continued traveling at a slightly slower pace at the end of August, he strictly followed the health instructions, so he was not so present on the field. He campaigned far from voters, often avoiding reporters, as his critics warned.
Donald Trump, who called him "Sleepy Joe", mocks the "childish questions" asked by reporters and does not fail to criticize his physical form.
Biden's sometimes incomprehensible speech, the result of stuttering in his youth, is constantly circulating on the Twitter profiles of Trump supporters, and the campaign staff of the current president openly describes him as a senile old man.
A historic upheaval in the internal party elections
Barack Obama's former right-hand man can contradict critics with a triumph in the Democratic primaries, after a historic upheaval in American politics.
According to some, too old, others too in the center, Biden first suffered three painful defeats in Iowa, New Hampshire and Nevada, and then won a large majority in South Carolina, thanks to African-American votes, which are necessary for any Democrat who wants to the White House.
On the wings of that victory, he continued one after another, quickly gained the support of other moderate candidates and then defeated his great rival, the socialist-oriented Bernie Sanders.
Contrary to the tough and long battle in 2016 between Sanders and Hillary Clinton, Biden managed to quickly gather the left wing of the party, driven by the same goal - to defeat Donald Trump.
Although Biden is running, in the words of Barack Obama, "with the most progressive program in the history of American presidential elections", some on the left consider him too weak. And they grumble when he says he will renew dialogue with Republicans.
I didn't misremember
This is Biden's third attempt to become president, after failing in the 1988 and 2008 Democratic primaries.
A senator for more than 35 years (from 1973 to 2009), then vice president of the USA from 2009 to 2017, Biden has been part of the Washington establishment for decades.
His political career is long, full of controversial episodes, but also successes that he likes to brag about.
From supporting segregation to favoring African Americans
In the XNUMXs, at the height of the struggle against segregation, he opposed the policy of busing black children to majority white schools, in order to encourage their mixing. That suited white voters in Delaware at the time, but it backfired on him later, for example when Senator Kamala Harris, then his rival in the primaries, threw it at him in the middle of a televised debate.
Emphasizing that it was not a "misremembering", Biden still chose her as his vice-presidential candidate.
Harris is the first African-American vice presidential candidate in US history. She is of Indian descent on her mother's side.
Popular among African-Americans, Biden advocated the construction of social housing in his early years. And he often points out how his experience as a swimming teacher in a predominantly black neighborhood helped him in his political career.
There are other episodes that weighed on his campaign for the White House - his vote for the Iraq war in 2003 and his support for a 1994 criminal law that has been blamed for an explosion in the largely African-American prison population.
"A mistake," Biden admits today, who insists on another aspect of that major reform - the law against violence against women, which he is "very proud of."
Entering Barack Obama's White House at the height of the financial crisis, the former senator worked to pass a massive $800 billion economic rescue plan. He is happy to point this out, in order to prove that he can restart the economy, which is in a major crisis due to the pandemic.
Born in Pennsylvania, raised in Delaware
Joseph Robinette Biden Jr. was born on November 20, 1942 in Scranton, Pennsylvania. That mining and industrial town went through a difficult period in the fifties. His father looked for work in the neighboring state of Delaware and then moved the whole family to Wilmington. Joe Biden was ten years old then. He turned that city into his base.
"My father always said - Champion, a man's greatness is not measured by how many times he was knocked to the ground, but by how long it took him to get back up," he often recalls.
Polls show that the gap between the two candidates in Pennsylvania is narrow, and both are trying to win over voters until the last minute.
"Pennsylvania is key in this election. I live in Delaware, but I'm a son of Pennsylvania, born in Scranton," Biden said on Sunday.
Trump, on the other hand, accuses him of forgetting the country he comes from and endangering its coal mines and hydraulic fracturing sector with promises to achieve 100 percent clean energy and carbon neutrality by 2050.
"Is Bo proud of me?"
Even Biden was not spared the accusations that he likes to touch women. He apologized for this in April 2019, promising to respect the "personal space" of others. Tara Reid even claims that he sexually assaulted her in the XNUMXs, which he categorically denies. Trump did not comment much on it, because he himself has a dozen such accusations.
Campaigning for him across the country, wife Jill Biden (69) is discreet about it. A dynamic professor, she is one of his greatest assets. The couple married in 1977 and have a daughter, Ashley.
Biden is very attached to his family. In 2015, his eldest son Beau Biden died of brain cancer. He often talks about it with sadness. This is why he did not run in the 2016 presidential elections.
A Catholic who is proud of his Irish roots, Biden visits the small church of St. Joseph in Wilmington.
In January, he said about his late son - "Every morning I wake up and... I wonder if he is proud of me?".
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