As the American elections wind up, Joe Biden was declared the United States President-elect on November 7, 2020. Joe Biden representing the Democratic Party in the United States was the 47th Vice President of the United States in the Democratic Administration under President Obama from 2009 to 2017. He made history in the 2020 elections by winning over 74 million popular votes—the most in U.S. presidential election to date. He is also the oldest first-term president in U.S. history, at the age of 78.
Joseph Robinette Biden, born on 20th November 1942, grew up in the blue-collar city of Scranton, Pennsylvania, and New Castle County, Delaware. Biden studied history and political science at the University of Delaware and also obtained a law degree from Syracuse University in 1968. In 1970 he was elected a New Castle County Councillor. At the age of 29, he became the fifth-youngest senator in American history when he was elected to the U.S. Senate from Delaware. Biden won re-election in 1978 and five times after that. He served the U.S. Senate for 36 years including eight years as chair of the Judiciary Committee and four years as chair of the Foreign Relations Committee. He ran unsuccessfully for the Democratic Presidential Nomination in 1988 and 2008. He resigned as Senator to serve as Vice President for Barack Obama in 2008. They were re-elected in 2012. In January 2017, Biden was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom with distinction by Obama.
Biden married Neilia Hunter in 1966 and the couple had three children. Before he was sworn in as the fifth-youngest senator in U.S. history, in December 1972, his wife and 13-month-old daughter were killed and his two sons were hospitalized when a tractor-trailer plowed into their station wagon. Biden did not move to Washington D.C. after the tragedy and traveled by train every day so that he could spend time with his sons. Biden remarried Jill Jacobs, a school teacher, in 1977 and had a daughter. Later in 2015, Joe Biden’s elder son, Joseph R.Biden III who was also the former attorney general of Delaware died at the age of 46 due to brain cancer.
Joe Biden won the respect of the Senate as one of the body’s leading foreign policy experts, serving as chairman of the Committee on Foreign Relations for several years. His many foreign policy positions included advocating for strategic arms limitation with the Soviet Union, promoting peace and stability in the Balkans, expanding NATO to include former Soviet-bloc nations, and opposing the First Gulf War. He is also known for calling for American action to end the genocide in Darfur and spoke out against President George W. Bush’s handling of the Iraq War and opposing the troop surge of 2007.
While Biden took up the position as Vice President to the Obama Administration, he took active roles in formulating federal policies relating to Iraq and Afghanistan. In 2010, he used his well-established Senate connections to help secure passage of the New Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty between the United States and the Russian Federation. Biden also campaigned for Hilary Clinton during the elections in 2016, but ultimately lost the election to Donald Trump.
During the election campaign for the 2020 elections, Joe Biden outlined a platform that included a number of policies that appealed to progressives. He showed support for low-income communities, federal health care plans, climate change legislation, and affordable child care. He also criticized President Donald Trump’s response to the coronavirus pandemic. In August 2020, Kamala Harris was chosen by Joe Biden to run as Vice President. On November 7, Biden was declared the winner of the 2020 presidential election by the Associated Press and major media outlets.
Joe Biden is a truly inspiring figure for many around the world. His life teaches everyone that struggles shouldn’t be an obstacle to achieve your goals. In Biden’s words “Failure at some point in your life is inevitable, but giving up is unforgivable.”
