Biden wins the US election: 5 things you might not know about the president-elect
The third time was the charm: Joe Biden will become the 46th president of the United States on January 20.
The Democrat defeated the current president, Donald Trump, in a disputed contest that was defined days after election day after a laborious process of counting the votes.
Biden, who was vice president under Barack Obama, managed to win back the support of key states that in 2016 voted for his Republican rival.
About to turn 78, the Democrat will be the oldest president of the United States.
We tell you other outstanding details of his personal and professional life.
1. A career politician
As Trump has insisted on reminding him throughout the campaign, Biden has been active in American politics for 47 years.
His career in Washington DC began in the Senate in 1973, where he won a seat for the state of Delaware in his early 30s.
His arrival in politics coincided with one of the most tragic moments of his life, which we will talk about later.
As a senator, Biden cemented the image of a close politician, conciliatory and with the ability to reach agreements with his opponents.
He also made some not-so-lauded decisions, like the 1994 criminal justice law he wrote and passed during Bill Clinton's first administration.
The reform aimed to curb decades of escalating violence, but it led to mass incarcerations, with a special impact on the black and Latino population.
To his long career as a senator, we must add his eight years as vice president of Barack Obama (2009-2017), with whom he built an excellent relationship beyond the professional.
This is the third time that he has tried to reach the presidency of the country.
The first two were a flop, prompting a section of Democrats to wonder if it was the best way to win the presidency from Trump.
The circumstances show that it was.
2. The tragedy that marked its political premiere
Unfortunately, the joy of winning the Senate election did not last long.
A few weeks after his victory, his family was in a serious car accident while he was in Washington, DC, interviewing staff for his new office.
His wife Neilia and the couple's three children were returning from buying the Christmas tree when a truck carrying corncobs collided with their car.
The woman, 30, and the young daughter, Naomi, 13 months old, died.
The children - Beau, 3, and Hunter, 2, were seriously injured and hospitalized.
A period of painful contrasts was beginning in Biden's life.
3. Pain and empathy
Biden, who took the oath of office in the Senate in the hospital room where his son Beau was recovering, did not know whether to continue his career as a senator.
I was shattered.
Raised in a working-class Catholic family, his father repeated a short but forceful mantra: "Get up, get up after you've been knocked down."
That's what he did. He decided to throw himself into work, but without leaving his children.
One of the outstanding anecdotes of his first years as a senator dates from that time: every day he made the round trip by train between his home in Wilmington, Delaware, and Washington DC, more than 300 kilometers a day to be close to his own .
This is how Biden developed a close bond with his children that only strengthened as they became adults.
In 1977, Biden married Jill, a university professor with whom he has a daughter, Ashley, and with whom he managed to rebuild his family.
Many saw Beau as his father's possible successor in politics.
After serving in Iraq with the National Guard in 2008, Beau was a two-term Delaware state attorney general with a brilliant career ahead of him.
But in 2013 he was diagnosed with a rare form of brain tumor and died two years later.
The loss of such close people shaped Biden's character.
Those who know him best say that he has the "superpower of empathy", a trait that was highlighted during the campaign to present him as the ideal president to overcome a health, economic and social crisis such as that of the covid-19 pandemic.
4. Globalist and committed to the planet
Biden has defended the need to rebuild US relations with allied countries that, in his opinion, have been affected during the Trump presidency.
He promises to return to the Paris Agreement to fight climate change and to the World Health Organization, for example.
He is not lacking in experience: he headed the Senate Foreign Relations Committee and boasts that he has "met all the important leaders of the world in the last 45 years."
His decisions in the international sphere have not been without criticism.
In 1991 he voted against the Gulf War; however, in 2003 he was in favor of the invasion of Iraq and later became a critic of the involvement of the United States in that country.
Cautious in nature, he advised Obama not to carry out the special forces operation that culminated in the death of Osama Bin Laden.
Republicans love to point out that Robert Gates, Obama's former defense secretary, said "there's no way anyone doesn't like Biden," but that he's been "wrong on almost every major foreign policy and national security issue. in the last four decades. "
Gates recently noted that his words were taken out of context.
5. Prone to gaffes
Biden's detractors say he is an outdated member of the Establishment too old for office and with a tendency to screw up.
His straightforward, easygoing style has caused him some problems, such as when he said in the middle of the campaign that if an African-American was not convinced to vote for him it meant he was not black, statements for which he later apologized.
Biden says that the memory of his childhood stuttering makes him dislike reading the speeches of an electronic prompter and so he prefers to speak from memory.
A journalist for NY Magazine wrote last year that the prospect of Biden improvising a speech was something his campaign team seemed "focused on avoiding at all costs."
That is why his supporters breathed a sigh of relief that he was able to get through the presidential debates and campaign speeches without saying anything that would put him in a bind.
Another facet of his spontaneous and sociable personality is his propensity to get too close to people, which has led to awkward situations, obviously in pre-coronavirus times.
Last year, eight women accused him of inappropriate touching, hugging and kissing, while US television showed videos in which he was seen greeting women at public events in close physical proximity.
In response, Biden vowed to "be more careful" in his interactions.
His "stubborn" attitude went from being an anecdote to something more serious when last March a former aide, Tara Reade, alleged that the president-elect sexually assaulted him 30 years ago in Washington.
Biden and his team rejected the accusation and the case ended up being blurred without occupying a relevant place during the campaign.
Although his Republican rivals have tried to portray him as a man with senile dementia who is in the hands of the radical left of the Democratic Party, Biden has managed to get away with it and has ended up becoming the most voted president in the history of the United States.
Interestingly, when evaluating a few years ago whether or not he was encouraged to participate in the 2016 presidential race, Biden said: "I can die a happy man without being president."
