Who is Joe Biden?

Joseph R. Biden Jr., is a Senior Senator from the state of Delaware, who has been involved with the Democratic Party for some time now. After growing up in New Castle County of the state of Delaware, he attended the University of Delaware and double majored in history and political science before making his way to the Syracuse University College of Law. While attending law school he married his first wife Neilia Hunter, whom he had three children with before he decided to run for Senate. Tragedy struck in 1972 when his wife and children were in car accident, killing his wife and infant daughter, and causing him to seriously consider not taking a position of Senator for Delaware that he had recently been elected. From the bedside of his sons at the hospital, he was sworn in as Senator, after being convinced to stay on in the post. In 1977 he re-married to his current wife Jill Tracy Jacobs, whom he has had a daughter with.

His Political Career

When Joe Biden was elected to the Senate and took office on January 3rd, 1973, he was the 5th youngest senator to ever take the position when he did so at the age of 30. In elections after that date, he has easily won additional terms on the Senate, with the closest election in 1978 when he only won by a margin of 58% to 41%, but since that date has won much more easily in 1984, 1990, 1996, and finally over Republican candidate Raymond J. Clatworthy in 2002. The 6-term Senator is now one of the longest standing members of the Senate. Currently, as a member of the 110th Congress, Biden serves as chairman of the Committee on Foreign Relations, a member of the Judiciary Committee, and a Co-Chairman of the Caucus on International Narcotics Control. Some of his noteworthy accomplishments include helping to craft the Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act of 1994, and the Violence against Women Act of 1994. The VAWA was created to fight domestic violence and helped to set measures that address these gender-based crimes. As the chairman of the International Narcotics Control Caucus, he wrote the laws that created our nation's Drug Czar who would oversee and coordinate national drug control policy. In addition to these paramount bills, Biden has also sought to promote college programs, help provide tax cuts for families with higher education expenses, and through his "Kids 2000" program, established a private and public partnership to "provide computer centers, teachers, Internet access, and technical training to young people, particularly to low-income and at-risk youth" (from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joe_biden).

Presidential Aspirations

For the 1988 election, Biden put his name in as a candidate for the Democratic Party, and looked like an early favorite to earn the nomination, and he looked to be competing quite strongly. Things started to turn sour though, when he started to first lag behind additional candidates Michael Dukakis and Richard Gephardt, and then controversy started to follow him. During a speech he had done correctly many times before, he forgot to cite the original author correctly, and was called out about it publicly. Then, it was widely reported that he had been accused of plagiarism in college due to what he called inadvertent in a misunderstanding of the proper rules of citation. Other discrepancies about his grades and degrees while in college further led to his withdrawal from the election, not really appearing to have as much public support as he once did. He didn't show a public interest in the position of President until he briefly entered the field of contestants for the 2004 election, but withdrew his name due to his claim of not having enough time for the position. On January 21st, 2007, Joe Biden again tossed his hat in the ring with a declaration of his intent to run for President, and he went on the campaign trail with a strong presence. His verbal assessments of Republican Rudy Giuliani could be considered a reason that Giuliani lost steam on his side of the contests, and for that the Democratic Party should be very happy with Biden. When the Iowa caucuses began, Biden withdrew his name from the presidential race when he looked to be finishing 5th behind the other stronger Democratic candidates at the time. He went back to work at winning the 2008 election for State Senate, but now it looks as though he may be running for an even higher office in the very near future.