Joe Biden’s historic decision on Sunday to step down as the Democratic nominee for president signals an imminent end to one of the most consequential American political careers.
At 81, the oldest president ever sworn in has finally yielded to time – and his own party. Someone else, possibly the vice-president, Kamala Harris, will face Donald Trump in November.
Biden, who endorsed Harris on Sunday, will remain in the White House until January. But Democrats and Republicans will soon survey something new: a political landscape without Biden at its centre.
Born in Pennsylvania in 1942, Biden attended the University of Delaware and Syracuse law school, became a public defender, then entered politics. A natural campaigner, in 1972, at just 29, he ran for US Senate, scoring a huge upset over J Caleb Boggs, a two-term Republican more than twice his age.
The same year, voters gave Richard Nixon a landslide win. Nixon was the 37th president. In 2021, Biden would become the 46th. In that 49-year span, as eight presidents came and went, Biden was a senator for 36 years, vice-president for eight.
As a junior senator, Biden suffered his first, but not last, tragedy when a car crash killed his wife, Neilia Biden, and one-year-old daughter, Naomi, at Christmas in 1972. Biden became known for riding the rails, from Delaware to Washington DC and back, to care for his sons, Beau and Hunter, who survived the accident.
He married his second wife, Jill Jacobs, in 1977, and their daughter, Ashley, was born four years later.
For 17 years, Biden was a ranking member or chair of the Senate judiciary committee. He led five supreme court confirmations. In 1991 the nominee, Clarence Thomas, was accused of sexual harassment and Biden was widely seen to have mishandled the hearings. In 2019, he said Thomas’s accuser, Anita Hill, “did not get treated well. I take responsibility for that.”
Biden’s record on crime would also haunt him, particularly his support for a 1994 bill many say contributed to problems of mass incarceration and racial injustice. Another 1994 bill, banning assault weapons, remained a source of pride.
For 11 years, Biden was chair or ranking member of the foreign relations committee. In 1991, he voted against the Gulf war. In 2002, after 9/11, he voted for the invasion of Iraq. He later said that vote was wrong.
In 1987, Biden first ran for president. At 45, he sought comparison with John F Kennedy but as reported by Richard Ben Cramer in the campaign classic What It Takes, youth, ambition and drive were not enough to prevent embarrassing failure.
Biden took to quoting Neil Kinnock, then Labour leader in Britain, about being the first member of his family to go to college. Unfortunately, Biden stopped saying he was quoting.
Kinnock didn’t mind but the US press did. Biden’s freewheeling speaking style (and accompanying evocations of his Irish ancestry) often left him open to error. But he was undoubtedly an effective communicator, all the more remarkably so given he stammered as a child.
Months after abandoning his presidential campaign, Biden suffered a brain aneurysm so severe a priest was called to administer last rites. Months later, he suffered another.
He was nothing if not resilient. Twenty years later, he ran for president again. A great debate stage line, about a Republican rival, went down in history: “Rudy Giuliani, there’s only three things he mentions in a sentence: a noun, a verb and 9/11.” But Biden soon dropped out.
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Barack Obama won the nomination. When the Illinois senator, 47, picked Biden, 66, as his running mate, the New York Times said Obama had acquired “a longtime Washington hand” who could “reassure voters” rather than “deliver a state or reinforce [a] message of change”.
Biden spent eight years as vice-president, his working relationship with Obama, reporting suggested, not quite so close as it was often portrayed. Biden played key roles in successes including advancing LGBTQ+ rights, legislating to prevent violence against women and securing healthcare reform. A push for gun reform failed.
Biden eyed a third presidential run but in 2015 the death of his son Beau from brain cancer took a terrible toll. Furthermore, Obama backed Hillary Clinton.
Amid the chaos of the Trump years, Biden decided to run again. Significant support from Black voters propelled a primary win. In the year of Covid, campaign travel was limited. For a 77-year-old candidate, that wasn’t much of a problem. Come the election, Biden won by more than 7m votes and with electoral college ease.
The first major book on 2020 was called Lucky: How Joe Biden Barely Won the Presidency. Regardless, his campaign message about a “battle for the soul of America” fueled two productive years. With congressional Democrats, Biden secured major legislation, boosting the economy after Covid, securing infrastructure investment and funding the climate crisis fight.
Trump had incited an attack on Congress, but Trumpism would not die. Republicans took back the House. Biden oversaw foreign policy disaster – the chaotic withdrawal from Afghanistan – and success, marshalling support for Ukraine against Russia.
The dam could not hold. Questions about Biden’s age and fitness ran at a hum before the disastrous debate in Atlanta in June saw Democratic dissent burst through.
At first, Biden displayed characteristic fire, blaming “elites” to which he never felt he belonged, vowing to fight on. But then Trump survived an assassination attempt and emerged seemingly stronger than ever.
Democratic calls for Biden to quit grew louder. Eventually, he heard them.
