Biden president: the crowning of a long career in the service of the United States
Joe Biden meeting in Philadelphia, June 2020. AP Photo / Matt Slocum
Text by: RFI Follow
8 min
It is not the "blue wave" that he expected, but Democrat Joe Biden is now the 46th President of the United States, in an America more divided than ever and after four days of endless ballot counting - which ends. continue -, including more than 100 million by correspondence.
At 77, Joe Biden, former vice-president of Barack Obama, will take office at the White House on January 20.
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Joe Biden finally got there.
He who had attempted the adventure and failed twice by running for the Democratic Party primaries in 1988 and then in 2008 will finally become the tenant of the White House.
But the course will not have been easy for the one who was given the favorite of the Democratic primary more than a year ago.
Almost out of the race after the first caucuses and the first primaries, he finally overtook all his opponents and emerged as the only one able to overthrow Donald Trump, which he narrowly managed.
From the Senate to the White House: a very long political career
At 77, Joe Biden is a veteran of American politics.
He will be re-elected six times to the Senate, for thirty-six years.
Among the most famous laws of which he is at the origin, one on “violent crimes” in the 1990s, another against domestic violence, a third on drug traffickers.
Joe Biden will climb all the levels of the Senate where he has held very important positions, recalls
Jean-Eric Branaa
, author of
Joe Biden, the 3rd term of Barack Obama
: chairman of the judicial committee in the Senate, chairman of the prestigious affairs committee foreigners in 2001 and 2006.
Joe Biden will only leave this institution to become in 2008 vice-president of Barack Obama, who beat him in the Democratic primary and who needs a “
veteran
” by his side.
Joe Biden had tried his luck for the first time in the 1988 Democratic primary, but had to throw in the towel after being accused of plagiarism - one of his speeches strangely resembled that given by an English Labor.
During his two terms as vice president, Joe Biden will remain discreet in the face of the always charismatic President Obama - a charisma he lacks, he is known to often search for his words.
His often publicized friendship with the president seems real.
Barack Obama will present him with the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 2017, one of the two highest civilian decorations in the country.
The former US president will also accompany him in person to his campaign meetings as in Michigan, a few days before the November 3 election.
This is where we see Barack Obama catch a basketball, dribble and score a basket, to applause.
The video has been viewed over 10 million times.
Joe Biden finally reaches the first post, but all eyes are already on Vice-President Kamala Harris, points out Jean-Eric Branaa, because "
if ever he did not finish the mandate, and given his age we have the right to think so , it would be Kamala Harris who would reach the top step
”.
Joe Biden and his humble origin: seducing the working class
Joseph Robinette Biden Jr. was born in 1942 in Scranton, a working-class town in Pennsylvania, to an Irish Catholic family.
Her father is a car salesman.
Joe Biden will also put forward, much later, his modest origins to seduce the working class who voted in majority Donald Trump in 2016. As a child, he succeeded in overcoming the stuttering from which he was afflicted.
The family then moved to Delaware, where he entered college and studied history and political science.
He married, became a lawyer, then turned to politics and at the age of 29, in 1972, was elected senator from Delaware for the first time, the youngest in the country's history.
It was in Wilmington that he settled, a working-class town that developed when he arrived there with his parents.
During his presidential campaign, Joe Biden repeatedly recalled his humble origins to woo the "blue collar", the white working class who had felt helpless during Barack Obama's two terms and who had leaned for Donald Trump in 2016. The most neglected and the poorest fringes of society are also those who have suffered the most from the Covid-19 crisis, as he was able to recall in his campaign speeches, speeches which this time more seduced than four years ago.
His empathy, his benevolence, a political mark
In a very specific context, the coronavirus pandemic requires, Joe Biden has gradually gained distance in the polls in part thanks to his empathy.
The latter predicted an easy victory for him.
But the "blue wave" was not there, and in some states, it is in a pocket handkerchief that he won the ballot.
The life of the now 46th President of the United States has always been marked by obstacles and very early on marked by tragedy.
In 1972, less than a month after being elected United States Senator, his first wife Neilia and daughter Naomi were killed in a car accident;
his two injured sons, Bo and Hunter, escape.
Joe Biden remarried five years later to
his
still
wife, Jill, with whom he had a daughter
.
But in 2015, another tragedy: his son Bo, the Attorney General of Delaware, died of brain cancer.
Very affected, Joe Biden decides not to contest the Democratic primary of 2016. Even today, he cites these personal tragedies in his speeches.
“
This is part of his strategy,
” explains Sonia Dridi in her book
Joe Biden: America's bet against Trump
: “
We have seen it in recent months, whether during the health crisis or in the aftermath of the protests and violence after George Floyd's death, he recalled his own tragedies to bond with Americans, and ultimately it works very well, many found it to be true, there was a lot of emotion, it's really a strong point.
"
Joe "the blunderer" managed to win
“
I'm a blunderbuss, but what a wonderful thing about a guy who can't tell the truth!
Hear Donald Trump.
Joe Biden launched this cry from the heart in December 2018. He is indeed a serial blunderer, with his blunders that are now nicknamed "bidenisms" as when during a meeting, he asked a senator in a wheelchair to getting up, or when he, until recently, confused his wife and daughter on a podium.
Last year, Joe Biden was accused by two women of inappropriate gestures (a kiss on the head without consent, one nose rubbed against another), and by one of his former Senate assistants, Tara Reade, of rape.
An accusation that Joe Biden formally denies, recalling that he is at the origin of a law against domestic violence.
Donald Trump now calls him, among other things, "the vicious".
The candidate also made a number of comments deemed racist.
He once equated black children with poor children, before attempting to recover;
affirmed
that a black is not black if he votes for Trump
… Remarks which caused a scandal, which Joe Biden himself described as unfortunate and which, ultimately, are blamed for his blunders.
In the same vein, he praised the good relations he had at the start of his career with two segregationist senators - during a debate, Senator Kamala Harris, of Jamaican and Indian origin, criticized him for it. .
But it is she that he will choose
as co-listière
and who now becomes the first woman vice-president of the United States.
Eventually, Joseph Robinette Biden Jr., the boy from Scranton, managed to establish himself in a very polarized country.
Now he will have to manage a very complex situation and deal with a Senate that is not his own to manage an unprecedented health and economic crisis and a country more divided than ever after the mandate of Donald Trump.
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