Joe Biden

Joseph Robinette Biden Jr. was born in Scranton, Pennsylvania, into a working-class family whose financial struggles he invoked consistently throughout his political career. He attended the University of Delaware and Syracuse Law School, then won election to the US Senate from Delaware in 1972 at the age of 29 — one of the youngest senators ever elected. Five weeks after his victory, his wife Neilia and infant daughter Naomi were killed in a car accident. Biden was sworn in at his sons’ hospital bedsides and commuted by Amtrak from Wilmington to Washington daily to be home for Beau and Hunter each evening, earning the enduring nickname “Amtrak Joe.” His Senate career spanned 36 years and included chairmanships of both the Judiciary Committee — where he presided over the Bork and Thomas hearings — and the Foreign Relations Committee. He authored the Crime Bill of 1994, which mandated minimum sentences and funded 100,000 new police officers (later controversial), and the Violence Against Women Act. He mounted two failed presidential campaigns: in 1988, when he withdrew after a plagiarism scandal, and in 2008, when he dropped out after the Iowa caucuses.

Biden served as Vice President under Barack Obama from 2009 to 2017, overseeing the drawdown of US forces in Iraq and managing the administration’s economic recovery efforts. His son Beau died of brain cancer in May 2015, and he ultimately decided not to seek the 2016 Democratic nomination. He announced his 2020 presidential campaign in April 2019, survived a rocky primary in which he finished fourth in Iowa and fifth in New Hampshire, then won South Carolina decisively on the strength of support from Black voters, consolidated the moderate lane as rivals dropped out en masse before Super Tuesday, and defeated Trump 306–232 in the Electoral College. His presidency produced a historic legislative record: the $1.9 trillion American Rescue Plan addressed COVID-19 economic damage; the $1.2 trillion Bipartisan Infrastructure Law was the largest infrastructure investment in decades; the CHIPS Act committed $52 billion to domestic semiconductor manufacturing; and the Inflation Reduction Act ($369 billion in climate and clean energy investment) became the largest climate legislation in US history. He unified NATO allies in response to Russia’s February 2022 invasion of Ukraine and authorized the drone strike killing al-Qaeda leader Ayman al-Zawahiri in July 2022. Inflation, however, peaked at 9.1% in June 2022 — the highest in 40 years — and proved the defining drag on his approval ratings for the remainder of his term.

On July 21, 2024, Biden dropped out of the presidential race under intense pressure from senior Democratic officials, donors, and members of Congress following his disastrous June 27 debate performance against Trump, in which he appeared visibly confused and struggled repeatedly to finish sentences. He endorsed Vice President Kamala Harris immediately upon withdrawing. Biden left office on January 20, 2025, with a 38% approval rating according to Gallup — the lowest exit approval since Jimmy Carter. He retired to his home in Rehoboth Beach, Delaware. His decision not to step aside earlier — or to enter the race in the first place — is now debated as a key factor in Harris’s loss. His legacy will long be contested between two competing narratives: the president who restored democratic norms and passed transformational legislation on one side, and the candidate whose stubbornness and declining faculties cost his party the White House on the other.

Biden won 81.2 million votes in 2020 — the most votes ever cast for a presidential candidate at the time. He was the first president since Herbert Hoover not to seek his party’s nomination for a second full term. His June 27, 2024 debate performance, described by Democrats as “heartbreaking,” ended his candidacy and set in motion the sequence of events that led to Kamala Harris’s nomination and eventual defeat. Whether his decision to step aside is judged as a noble act of self-sacrifice or as a catastrophically belated acknowledgment of cognitive decline that cost Democrats the election will define how historians assess his character — separate from his policy record.

His legislative accomplishments — particularly the infrastructure law and the climate investment in the IRA — rank among the most significant domestic policy achievements of any modern presidency. His foreign policy record on Ukraine and NATO will likely be viewed more favorably over time than his approval ratings during the inflation period suggest. The parallel collapse of his political standing and physical presence in the final year of his presidency make Biden one of the most complex and contested figures in recent American political history.