Joe Biden: Stumbles, Tragedies And, Now, Delayed Triumph as 46th US President
News 18Days before he left the White House in 2017, President Barack Obama surprised Joe Biden with the Presidential Medal of Freedom, declaring his septuagenarian, white-haired lieutenant the best vice president Americas ever had, a lion of American history. Biden first joined a Democratic primary race shaped by nearly two dozen rivals — most considerably younger — already deep into an ideological fight over issues from universal health care to taxation of billionaires. Biden was the presumed front-runner he hadnt been in 1987, when his first White House bid ended embarrassingly with a plagiarized speech; or in 2008, when he was trounced in the Iowa caucuses by Obama and others; or even in 2016, when the combination of his son Beaus death in 2015 and Obamas behind-the-scenes support for Clinton forced him to pass on the race. I endorsed Joe Biden as soon as he announced because I thought he was the only candidate who would ever win battleground states, said Gwen Graham, a former Florida congresswoman and 2018 candidate for governor. It’s an open question whether the bond Biden formed first with Black voters and then with moderate white Democrats would have expanded into a general election victory if the COVID-19 pandemic — and Trumps repeated dismissal of its economic and health threats — hadnt come to dominate 2020.