Joe Biden is all that stands between Donald Trump and another term as the President of the United States. As a seasoned figure in American politics, Biden has been involved in the running of the government since the 1970s, at the tender age of 27 and, going by the 2020 Presidential election odds, all of that experience is set to work in his favour. He is probably best known for his active role as Barack Obama’s Vice-President between 2009 and 2017, proving himself to be a reliable right-hand man.
In 1970, Joe Biden won a seat on the New Castle County council, in Delaware, serving for just two years before he leapt to the position of U.S. Senator. Two weeks after winning this seat, Biden was met with extreme tragedy, losing both his wife and daughter in a car accident. As he was sworn in by his son’s hospital bed, he became the fifth-youngest senator in American history. With so much heartbreak behind him, Biden was only made more determined to make a difference in whatever political role he found himself in. He remained as a Delaware senator for 36 years – the majority of his political career.
Joe Biden made his first bid for the White House in the 1988 US Election, running on the promise that he would:
“rekindle the fire of idealism in our society”.
His chances weren’t looking so bad at first, his ideas gaining a considerable amount of popularity. But soon a spanner was thrown into the works, by New York Times columnist Maureen Dowd. Dowd accused Biden of plagiarising several speeches from the mouth of the then British Labour Party leader Neil Kinnock, insisting that he practically “became Kinnock” at one point. She continued to claim that Biden had lifted personal stories from Kinnock’s speeches and passed them off as his own, in a 1987 debate. Despite his campaign managers jumping to his defence, and arguing the relevance of the lifted passages, a further investigation soon revealed that Biden had indeed plagiarised a large portion of Kinnock’s words. With his reputation in ruins, and the American people disappointed, Biden dropped out of 1988 race, just three months in.
Thankfully for his career, Biden maintained his senate seat, becoming one of the most active members at that time. Already an upstanding member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee since 1975, after his 1988 dropout, Biden went on to join the Senate Judiciary Committee as well, serving as the chairman until 1995.
Joe Biden attempted to run for President again in the 2008 Election, but was met with a vote of less than 1% in some states. Despite this bad reception, he went on to serve as Barack Obama’s Vice President between 2009 and 2017, striking up a firm friendship with his superior. As Vice-President, Biden oversaw several sessions of the President’s Cabinet, as well as leading interagency efforts and working with Congress to raise the living standards of middle-class Americans, reduce gun violence and raise further awareness for the issue of violence against women.
On April 25th 2019, Joe Biden announced that he would be running as the 2020 Presidential candidate for the Democratic party, via an online video. Obama fans were delighted with this news, as a lot of Biden’s ideas align with the previous President’s campaigns. Going up against Donald Trump, America’s current President who’s hoping to be re-elected, Biden certainly has his work cut out for him!