Washington, Apr 25 (EFE).- Determination and perseverance have defined the life of US President Joe Biden. After the tragic death of his wife and his daughter in a traffic accident, he continued to fulfill his obligations in the Senate and, after two failed attempts to reach the White House, he did not give up and finally in 2020 he did with the win.
Today, at 80 years old and being the oldest president in the history of the United States, Democrat Joe Biden did not surprise anyone when he announced his candidacy for re-election in the 2024 elections.
His message revolved around the idea that one must finish what one starts, a philosophy of life that has characterized his career and to which he has frequently alluded in recent months. As early as February, during his State of the Union address to Congress, he chanted twelve times, “Let’s finish the job!”
Biden appeared before the American people this Tuesday as the best option to prevent the United States from returning to the darkness of the days of former President Donald Trump (2017-2021), who remains the favorite to represent the Republican Party in 2024 despite being defendant in a criminal case in New York.
When Biden ran in the 2020 election, he did so with the promise of uniting a deeply divided society and saving the “soul” of the nation. Four years after that announcement, this politician has thrown himself back into the ring with the promise to continue defending the values of hope, decency and dignity that constitute the identity of the United States.
One of his great promises is to continue defending the working class, which he considers the “backbone” of the country, and for which he has governed in the last two years with policies aimed at promoting job creation, investing in social programs and reduce the price of medicines.
In fact, in his speeches he often repeats a phrase used by his father, a second-hand car salesman, who thought that politicians should give the middle class a little “room to breathe” with measures that allow them to prosper economically.
And it is that, the figure of Biden cannot be understood without his humble origins. He was born in 1942 into a Catholic family of Irish origin in the mining city of Scranton (Pennsylvania), in the heart of the industrial belt of the United States.
Most of those industrial belt states, symbols of the working class, opted for Trump in 2016, but Biden managed to win them back for the Democratic field in 2020.
It was precisely that pull among white, working-class voters that led Barack Obama to choose Biden as vice president in 2008.
The two established a solid bond that grew stronger over time. Biden brought his pragmatism to Obama’s idealism and became a skilled behind-the-scenes negotiator, a role he comfortably assumed with 36 years of Senate experience and a reputation as a moderate Democrat willing to deal with Republican opposition.
However, in such a high-profile position as vice president, Biden also earned a reputation for being a fool.
In 2012, Biden declared his support for same-sex marriage in an interview on NBC, forcing Obama to take sides on an issue he had avoided taking a position on. And in November of last year, during an event at the White House, she asked if Jackie Walorski, a Republican congresswoman who had died more than a month earlier, was in the audience.
Mistakes or out of place phrases are so common in him that the term “Biden” to refer to his blunders has been included in the urban dictionary.
That tendency, along with his age, has come under fire from Republicans. Trump has nicknamed him “Sleepy Joe” (Joe the sleepyhead) and has made fun of the stutter he has suffered throughout his life, which has reappeared with increasing frequency in recent years.
During the 2020 campaign, Biden promised that he would be a transitional figure, a “bridge” to a new generation of leaders like Kamala Harris, the first woman to reach the vice presidency; but shortly after arriving at the White House she changed her mind.
In any case, his figure cannot be understood without that nerve of political ambition: he tried unsuccessfully to win the Democratic presidential nomination in 1988 and 2008; and in 2016 he was about to announce his candidacy, but chose not to do so due to the death of his son Beau from cancer.
The passing of Beau, who had repeatedly encouraged his father to run for the White House, filled Biden with sadness. In his biography “Promise Me, Dad” (Promise me, dad), published in 2017, the now president recalls how he was about to break down in tears at an event in Colorado where a young man told him that he knew his son and had fought with he in Iraq.
Biden knows what grief is: he lost his first wife, Neilia Hunter, and their one-year-old daughter, Naomi, in a car accident on Christmas 1972, just after being elected senator from Delaware.
Her two sons, Beau and Hunter, were seriously injured. Biden considered leaving politics, but ended up being sworn in as a senator at the bedside of his children at the Delaware hospital where they were admitted.
Over time, Biden was able to rebuild his life. He married Jill in 1977, the current first lady and her inseparable companion, with whom he almost always walks hand in hand.
Together they had another girl and now enjoy the company of seven grandchildren. One of them, Naomi Biden, got married in November 2022 at the White House.
Beatriz Pascual Macias
