Joe Biden
From Metapedia
Joseph Robinette "Joe" Biden, Jr. (born November 20, 1942) is vice president elect of the United States.
Biden was born and raised in Scranton, Pennsylvania for ten years prior to moving to Delaware. He became an attorney in 1969 and was elected to a county council in 1970. Biden was first elected to the Senate in 1972; sworn in 1973 at the Constitutional minimum age of 30, he became the fifth-youngest senator in U.S. history. He was reelected to the Senate in 1978, 1984, 1990, 1996, and 2002. He is a long-time member and current chairman of the Foreign Relations Committee and has worked on resolutions concerning the Yugoslav wars and Iraq War. He has served as chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, dealing with issues related to drug policy, crime prevention, and civil liberties, and led creation of the Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act and Violence Against Women Act. He chaired the Judiciary Committee during the contentious U.S. Supreme Court nominations of Robert Bork and Clarence Thomas.
Biden unsuccessfully sought the Democratic presidential nomination in 1988 and 2008, both times dropping out early in the process. In his sixth consecutive term in the Senate, Biden has served for the sixth-longest period among current senators.
Barack Obama's presidential campaign announced that Biden would be Obama's running mate for the 2008 U.S. presidential election. Biden officially accepted the nomination on August 27, 2008 at the 2008 Democratic National Convention in Denver, Colorado.
[edit] Early life and education
Biden was born in Scranton, Pennsylvania, the son of Joseph Robinette Biden, Sr. (1915–2002) and Catherine Eugenia "Jean" Finnegan (born 1918).[1][2] He was the first of four siblings[2] and is of English heritage on his father's side and Irish heritage on his mother's side.[1] He has two brothers, James Brian Biden and Francis W. Biden, and a sister, Valerie (Biden) Owens.[3]
The Scranton area was in economic decline during the 1950s, and Biden's father could not find enough work.[4] The Biden family moved to Claymont, Delaware, when Biden was 10 years old,[2] and he grew up in suburban New Castle County, Delaware. His father then prospered as a car salesman and the family's circumstances were middle class.[4][5] One of his grandfathers was a member of the Pennsylvania State Senate.[5] Biden suffered from stuttering through much of his childhood and into his twenties;[6] he overcame it via long hours spent reciting poetry in front of a mirror.[7] Biden attended the Archmere Academy in Claymont,[8] where he was athletically, not academically, oriented[9] and a natural leader among the students.[7] He graduated in 1961.[8]
Biden attended the University of Delaware in Newark,[10] where by his own later description he was a lazy student.[11] He graduated with a Bachelor of Arts with a double major in history and political science in 1965,[2] ranked 506th of 688 in his class.[12] He went on to receive his Juris Doctor from Syracuse University College of Law in 1968,[10] where by his own description he again underperformed and ranked 76th of 85 students.[11][13] He was admitted to the Delaware Bar in 1969.[10]
Biden received five student draft deferments during this period, with the first coming in late 1963 and the last in early 1968, at the peak of the Vietnam War.[14] In April 1968, he was reclassified by the Selective Service System as not available for service due to having had asthma as a teenager.[14] Biden was not a part of the anti-Vietnam War movement; he would later say that at the time he was preoccupied with marriage and law school, and that he "wore sports coats ... not tie-dyed".[15]
