Joseph Robinette "Joe" Biden Jr. (20 November 1942-) was Vice President of the United States from 20 January 2009 to 20 January 2017 (succeeding Dick Cheney and preceding Mike Pence) and President of the United States from 20 January 2021 to 20 January 2025 (succeeding Donald Trump). He formerly served as a Democratic US Senator from Delaware from 3 January 1973 to 15 January 2009, succeeding J. Caleb Boggs and preceding Ted Kaufman.
Biography
Early career
Biden in 1973
Joseph Robinette Biden Jr. was born in Scranton, Pennsylvania in 1942, and he was raised in Claymont and Wilmington, Delaware. He became a lawyer in 1969 and was elected to the New Castle County Council in 1970 as a Democrat; he was elected to the US Senate in 1972 at the young age of 29, making him the sixth-youngest Senator in American history. He was re-elected six times, and, while he opposed the Gulf War, he advocated for US and NATO involvement in the Yugoslav Wars, the expansion of NATO, and the Iraq War (although he opposed the 2007 "troop surge"). Biden also led the efforts to pass the Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act of 1994 (which hired 100,000 new police officers, gave $9.7 billion in funding for federal prisons and $6.1 billion for prevention programs, federally banned assault weapons, expanded the federal death penalty, and implemented sex offender registries by 1997) and the Violence Against Women Act of 1994.
Vice Presidency
Biden as Vice President
In 2008, Illinois Senator Barack Obama chose Biden as his running mate during that year's presidential election, and Obama and Biden won with 365 electoral votes, 28 states, and 52.9% of the popular vote to the Republican John McCain's 173 electoral votes, 22 states, and 45.7% of the popular vote. As Vice President, Biden oversaw infrastructure spending to counteract the Great Recession, formulated US policy towards the withdrawal of US troops from Iraq in 2011, compromised with Republicans on taxation, the debt ceiling, and the fiscal cliff, and fought against gun violence as head of the Gun Violence Task Force. In January 2017, before leaving office, Obama awarded Biden with the Presidential Medal of Freedom.
2020 presidential campaign
Biden in 2020
Biden went on to become a professor of presidential practice at the University of Pennsylvania, and, on 25 April 2019, Biden announced his plans to run for President of the United States against Donald Trump. During the crowded Democratic primary, Biden initially trailed behind Bernie Sanders, but he won the support of the majority of African-American voters and, with the endorsements of several centrist primary drop-outs such as Pete Buttigieg, Kamala Harris, and Amy Klobuchar, he won a sweeping victory on Super Tuesday and became the presumptive nominee on 8 April 2020. He ran on a platform of opposing Donald Trump and fighting a battle for the "soul" of America, although he was a controversial candidate due to his advanced age, his frequent gaffes (Biden humorously called himself a "gaffe machine"), his centrist views (which were unpopular among young progressives and the party's socialist wing), and (potentially politically-motivated) sexual harassment allegations. Nonetheless, by 21 June 2020, an Ipsos poll found Biden leading Trump with 48% of the popular vote to Trump's 35%, as Trump's popularity eroded due to his poor handling of the COVID-19 pandemic and the George Floyd protests. On 11 August 2020, Biden chose Harris as his running mate after weeks of mulling over various African-American female candidates. In November 2020, he won a drawn-out presidential contest, winning Republican states such as Georgia and Arizona as well as swing states such as Pennsylvania and Nevada. Trump's efforts to overturn the election failed, culminating in the failed 2021 United States coup d'etat attempt at the US Capitol.
Presidency
Biden and Harris were inaugurated on 20 January 2021, and, on his first day in office, Biden signed several executive orders re-entering the USA into the Paris Climate Agreement and the World Health Organization, installed a Coronavirus Response Coordinator, canceled the Keystone XL pipeline, included non-citizens in the census, implemented a mask mandate on federal property, halted funding for Trump's border wall, reversed the travel ban targeting largely-Muslim countries, resumed regular press briefings, paused some deportations for 100 days, and rescinded the 1776 Commission. Over the next several months, Biden also saw a rapid vaccine rollout, which ensured that half of Americans above the age of 16 had received at least one vaccine shot by mid-April. Biden addressed an outbreak of mass shootings by working on an executive order to curb gun violence, while he worked with the US Congress to pass the American Rescue Plan to aid small businesses and working people during the persistent economic crisis. By 19 April 2021, Biden had a projected 53.3% approval rating, having entered office with a 57% approval rating; progressive and conservative critics blasted him for his early handling of the "border crisis" and the United States' continued confrontational stance towards Iran, but he was lauded on social media for his management of the government's COVID response, for his infrastructure plan, and for his support for social justice amid a period of widespread racial unrest.
Starting in late 2021, Biden faced a series of foreign policy reverses. Conservative critics blasted Biden for his handling of the American withdrawal from Afghanistan, which ended with the deaths of 13 US servicemembers in an ISIL suicide bombing attack at the Kabul airport. In February 2022, Russia invaded Ukraine in response to President Volodymyr Zelensky's refusal to rule out joining the European Union or NATO, and Biden oversaw the provision of American financial and materiel support to Ukraine to fight off the invasion, while being slow to provide Ukraine with high-tech military equipment and restraining their use of American weaponry to Ukrainian soil. In October 2023, the al-Aqsa Flood offensive against Israel by Hamas sparked a crisis in the Democratic Party as progressives criticized Biden for supporting Israel and Republicans accused the Biden administration of not doing enough to help Israel in its fight against terrorism. Declining support from young, Muslim, and progressive voters (some of whom called Biden "Genocide Joe", accusing him of enabling a "genocide" in Gaza), together with surging inflation and high gas prices (partly caused by the Russo-Ukrainian War), caused Biden's approval ratings to drop. However, Biden was able to achieve greater infrastructure spending, a boost in domestic research on and manufacture of semiconductors to compete economically with China, the Inflation Reduction Act, and a student loan forgiveness plan that was blocked by Republican judges. From 2022 onwards, a Republican-controlled House and Supreme Court limited Biden's capability to pass liberal legislation, and the Supreme Court rolled back Roe v. Wade, allowing for states to recriminalize abortion. The Republican majority in the House also blocked Biden's bipartisan border security bill, hoping that the continuation of the border crisis would hurt Biden, and that they could pass a border control bill once a Republican in the White House could take the credit.
During the 2024 presidential election, Biden quickly became the presumptive nominee of the Democratic Party, having not faced any significant primary challengers. On 27 June 2024, his poor performance in a debate against Donald Trump - during which he meandered, frequently lost his train of thought, stuttered, and made gaffes such as saying, "We beat Medicare" - led to a new round of Democratic infighting. Big-dollar donors stopped supporting his campaign, while, by late July 2024, 67% of Democratic voters supported removing Biden from the ticket. Biden was initially defiant, saying that only God could convince him to step down, but he later moderated his stance, conceding that he would drop out if there was proof that he could not win the election. Supporters of Biden's removal from the ticket feared that Biden's presence on the ticket meant that candidates down the ballot, such as in House and Senate races, might be negatively impacted by poor turnout or dissatisfaction with Biden, and that a younger and more capable candidate would have a much better chance of defeating Donald Trump, who was by then a convicted felon. After Nancy Pelosi, Chuck Schumer, and other leading Democrats publicly and privately urged Biden to drop out of the race, Biden announced, on 21 July 2024, that he would not be seeking re-election, just a month before the Democratic National Convention was convened.