Please ensure Javascript is enabled for purposes of website accessibility
Joe Biden: Stumbles, Tragedies and, Now, Delayed Triumph
gvw_ap_news
By Associated Press
Published 4 years ago on
November 7, 2020

Share

Days before he left the White House in 2017, President Barack Obama surprised Joe Biden with the Presidential Medal of Freedom, declaring his septuagenarian, white-haired lieutenant “the best vice president America’s ever had,” a “lion of American history.”

The tribute marked the presumed end of a long public life that put Biden in the orbit of the Oval Office for 45 years — yet, through a combination of family and personal tragedy, his own political missteps and sheer bad timing, had never allowed him to sit behind the Resolute Desk himself.

It turns out the pinnacle would not elude Biden after all. His moment just hadn’t yet arrived.

Joseph Robinette Biden Jr., 77, was elected Saturday as the 46th president of the United States, defeating President Donald Trump in an election that played out against the backdrop of a pandemic, its economic fallout and a national reckoning on racism. He becomes the oldest president-elect and brings with him a history-making vice president-elect in Kamala Harris, the first Black woman and person of South Asian descent to serve in the nation’s second-highest office.

There are no sure paths to a post held by only 44 men in more than two centuries, but Biden’s is among the most unlikely — even for a man who had aspired to the job for more than three decades, twice running unsuccessfully and passing on a third bid to try to succeed Obama four years ago.

The president-elect’s allies, though, say it is that delayed, circuitous route that prepared him for 2020, when he could finally offer himself not just as another senator or governor with 10-point plans and outsize ambition. Instead, from launch on April 25, 2019, Biden sold himself as the experienced, empathetic elder statesman particularly suited to defeat a “dangerous” and “divisive” president and then “restore the soul of the nation” in Trump’s wake.

His Victory, Though, Did Not Come With the Usual Trappings

“A lot of people dismissed it,” said Karen Finney, a top aide to nominee Hillary Clinton in 2016. “But when I saw his opening speech, talking about the fight for the soul of the country, I said, ‘He gets it.’ That’s what a president does. A president looks around the country and understands what’s happening.”

“Biden met the moment,” she said.

His victory, though, did not come with the usual trappings. He did not bring along a clear Democratic Senate majority, and several Democratic House candidates lost, raising the prospect of a closely divided government likely to test his promise of bipartisanship. State legislatures also did not flip even as Biden was winning the popular vote by about 5 percentage points.

Biden first joined a Democratic primary race shaped by nearly two dozen rivals — most considerably younger — already deep into an ideological fight over issues from universal health care to taxation of billionaires. Biden took an open lane, settling where he spent his 36 years as a Delaware senator: a mainstream liberal with an establishment, deal-making core. But his visceral, emotional appeal transcended party identity.

When he warned that reelecting Trump “would forever alter the character” of America, Biden was drawing on life and political experience to tell his fellow Democrats they were having a premature debate. In his estimate, they were arguing over where the metaphorical train should go when, in fact, the train was — and remains — off the rails.

Biden was the presumed front-runner he hadn’t been in 1987, when his first White House bid ended embarrassingly with a plagiarized speech; or in 2008, when he was trounced in the Iowa caucuses by Obama and others; or even in 2016, when the combination of his son Beau’s death in 2015 and Obama’s behind-the-scenes support for Clinton forced him to pass on the race.

Democratic presidential candidate former Vice President Joe Biden, right, and former President Barack Obama greet each other with an air elbow bump, at the conclusion of rally at Northwestern High School in Flint, Mich., Saturday, Oct. 31, 2020. (AP Photo/Andrew Harnik)

Talking So Much About His Family Played Into Trump’s Efforts to Sully Joe Biden and Son Hunter as Corrupt

Yet Biden was a wobbly 2020 favorite. He was well-regarded, even beloved as his party’s “Uncle Joe,” a loyal deputy to Obama, but he faced a river of criticism as too old, too moderate, too white, too wistful, too senatorial.

He was not the same figure who’d first gone to Iowa in the 1988 cycle as a young star in his party, a gifted orator whose booming speeches could fill a room while at the same time making a connection with the legacies of the Democratic coalition Franklin Roosevelt built.

Though he eventually built out a policy agenda for an ambitious presidency, there was no signature proposal for a grand program like “Medicare for All.” Biden emphasized more personal traits.

His empathy — traced to a debilitating childhood stutter, a 1972 car crash that killed his first wife and infant daughter weeks after his election to the Senate, and then Beau’s death as an adult — wasn’t something he could easily marshal on a crowded debate stage.

Recalling decades on Capitol Hill meant reminiscing about the days of a Senate that still included old Southern segregationists, and it invited scrutiny of his votes for criminal justice laws, trade and tax deals, and war resolutions that are anathema to younger Democrats.

Talking so much about his family played into Trump’s efforts to sully Joe Biden and son Hunter as corrupt. Even Biden’s umbrage about Trump’s racist rhetoric highlighted that he was also a white establishment figure, vying to lead a party whose energy comes from women, Black and Latino voters and young people.

When the nominating process started, Biden lost badly in both Iowa and New Hampshire, inviting talk about how he might make a graceful exit from the race.

‘He’s Nowhere Close to Finished’

He found emphatic redemption, powered by Black voters so vital to any Democratic candidate, by winning the South Carolina primary and resetting the race in his favor. That victory sent a message to Democratic voters in key states that Biden could build a winning coalition.

“I endorsed Joe Biden as soon as he announced because I thought he was the only candidate who would ever win” battleground states, said Gwen Graham, a former Florida congresswoman and 2018 candidate for governor. Graham, whose father served with Biden in the Senate, cited the president-elect’s “centrism and experience” as primary reasons, but added another trait she said was critical in the era of Trump.

“Joe Biden is just a fundamentally decent man,” she said.

House Majority Whip Jim Clyburn, the highest-ranking Black member of Congress and South Carolina’s most influential Democrat, leaned on the same assessment when he made his seminal endorsement in February, days ahead of what would become Biden’s first primary victory in 32 years of presidential campaigns.

“We know Joe,” Clyburn said with emotion. “But most importantly, Joe knows us.”

It’s an open question whether the bond Biden formed first with Black voters and then with moderate white Democrats would have expanded into a general election victory if the COVID-19 pandemic — and Trump’s repeated dismissal of its economic and health threats — hadn’t come to dominate 2020. And it’s certain the president-elect now faces a different challenge as he seeks to turn his November coalition into a governing alliance.

But it’s not debatable that Biden’s core pitch, rooted in his political and personal biography, was the same when he launched his campaign in the spring of 2019 as it was when he won the South Carolina primary in February 2020 and as he closed out his campaign against Trump.

Obama, awarding that rare civilian honor to a man he said in 2017 was headed to life as a private citizen, had one thing right: “He’s nowhere close to finished.”

RELATED TOPICS:

DON'T MISS

What Are Fresno Real Estate Experts Predicting for 2025 and Beyond?

DON'T MISS

First California EV Mandates Hit Automakers This Year. Most Are Not Even Close

DON'T MISS

More Than 100 Immigrants Detained at an Illegal After-Hours Nightclub in Colorado

DON'T MISS

Visalia Police Captain Charged With Embezzlement, Theft

DON'T MISS

Autopsy Confirms Gene Hackman Died From Heart Disease

DON'T MISS

Iran Proposes Meeting With Europeans Before Next Talks With US, Diplomats Say

DON'T MISS

Trump to Sign Order Requiring List of Sanctuary Cities, States, Official Says

DON'T MISS

Saudi Arabia and Qatar to Pay Off Syria’s Debt to the World Bank

DON'T MISS

Pakistan Defense Minister Says Military Incursion by India Is Imminent

DON'T MISS

Trump Administration Allows Temporary Sales of Summertime Higher-Ethanol Fuel

DON'T MISS

US Judge to Hear Harvard’s Case Over Trump Funding Freeze in July

DON'T MISS

Madera Man Arrested After Armed Robbery, K-9 Assists in Capture

UP NEXT

Trump Says Putin May Not Want Peace and May Need to Be ‘Dealt With Differently’

UP NEXT

Only About Half of Republicans Say Trump Has Focused on the Right Priorities

UP NEXT

Israeli Airstrike Kills 10 People, Half of Them Children

UP NEXT

Shedeur Sanders Is Still Waiting for a Call as the NFL Draft Enters the Final Day

UP NEXT

Israel’s AI Experiments in the War in Gaza Raise Ethical Concerns

UP NEXT

Paul Skenes Strikes Out 9, Wins Duel With Yamamoto in Pirates’ Victory Over Dodgers

UP NEXT

Eovaldi Outlasts Verlander as Rangers Beat Giants

UP NEXT

Rams Take Oregon Tight End Terrance Ferguson in Second Round After Trading Out of First

UP NEXT

The Latest: Francis Is Remembered as a ‘Pope Among the People’ as He Is Laid to Rest

UP NEXT

Trump Now Doubts Putin Wants to End Ukraine War, a Day After Saying a Deal Was Close

Iran Proposes Meeting With Europeans Before Next Talks With US, Diplomats Say

2 hours ago

Trump to Sign Order Requiring List of Sanctuary Cities, States, Official Says

2 hours ago

Saudi Arabia and Qatar to Pay Off Syria’s Debt to the World Bank

2 hours ago

Pakistan Defense Minister Says Military Incursion by India Is Imminent

2 hours ago

Trump Administration Allows Temporary Sales of Summertime Higher-Ethanol Fuel

3 hours ago

US Judge to Hear Harvard’s Case Over Trump Funding Freeze in July

3 hours ago

Madera Man Arrested After Armed Robbery, K-9 Assists in Capture

3 hours ago

Huge Power Outage Paralyzes Parts of Spain and Portugal

3 hours ago

US Sanctions Target Deliveries of Oil and Gas to Houthis

3 hours ago

Putin Orders 3-Day Truce in Ukraine Next Month, Kremlin Says

3 hours ago

More Than 100 Immigrants Detained at an Illegal After-Hours Nightclub in Colorado

More than 100 immigrants suspected of being in the United States illegally were taken into custody early Sunday following a federal raid at ...

10 minutes ago

In this image taken from video released by the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration, officers stop a patron from a nightclub where a raid occurred Sunday, April 27, 2025, in Colorado Springs, Colo. (U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration via AP)
10 minutes ago

More Than 100 Immigrants Detained at an Illegal After-Hours Nightclub in Colorado

Visalia Police Captain Luma Fahoum has been charged Friday, April 25, 2025, with embezzling nearly $50,000 from the department’s youth program and faces up to three years in local jail if convicted. (Tulare County DA)
54 minutes ago

Visalia Police Captain Charged With Embezzlement, Theft

59 minutes ago

Autopsy Confirms Gene Hackman Died From Heart Disease

A general view of Muscat, ahead of the awaited negotiations between U.S. and Iran, Muscat, Oman, April 25, 2025. (REUTERS/Ibraheem Abu Mustafa/File Photo)
2 hours ago

Iran Proposes Meeting With Europeans Before Next Talks With US, Diplomats Say

In his first hundred days in office, Trump has moved to strip legal immigration status from hundreds of thousands of people. On Sunday, the White House plastered across the lawnposters of people described as arrested illegal immigrants. (REUTERS/Evelyn Hockstein)
2 hours ago

Trump to Sign Order Requiring List of Sanctuary Cities, States, Official Says

A market in Old Damascus, Feb. 26, 2025. The civil war has taken a huge toll on the country’s economy, with industries decimated and infrastructure destroyed. (Kiana Hayeri/The New York Times)
2 hours ago

Saudi Arabia and Qatar to Pay Off Syria’s Debt to the World Bank

A Pakistan flag is seen on Pakistan Rangers' Post near the Attari-Wagah border crossing near Amritsar, India, April 26, 2025. India has suspended visa services to Pakistani nationals "with immediate effect" following an attack on tourists near Pahalgam in south Kashmir. (REUTERS/Anushree Fadnavis)
2 hours ago

Pakistan Defense Minister Says Military Incursion by India Is Imminent

Choices at the gas pump including ethanol or no ethanol gas are seen in Des Moines, Iowa, U.S., January 29, 2020. (REUTERS/Brian Snyder)
3 hours ago

Trump Administration Allows Temporary Sales of Summertime Higher-Ethanol Fuel

Help continue the work that gets you the news that matters most.

Search

Send this to a friend