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Joseph Robinette Biden Jr. was born November 20, 1942,at St. Mary's Hospital in Scranton, Pennsylvania, to Catherine Eugenia "Jean" Biden (née Finnegan) and Joseph Robinette Biden Sr. Biden's father had been wealthy, but suffered financial setbacks around the time Biden was born, and for several years the family lived with Biden's maternal grandparents.
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On August 27, 1966, Biden married Neilia Hunter (1942–1972), a student at Syracuse University, after overcoming her parents' reluctance for her to wed a Roman Catholic; the ceremony was held in a Catholic church in Skaneateles, New York. In 1968, Biden earned a Juris Doctor from Syracuse University College of Law, ranked 76th in his class of 85, after failing a course due to an acknowledged "mistake" when he plagiarized a law review article for a paper he wrote in his first year at law school.
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On December 18, 1972, a few weeks after the election, Biden's wife Nelia and one-year-old daughter Naomi were killed in an automobile accident while Christmas shopping in Hockessin, Delaware. Nelia's station wagon was hit by a semi-trailer truck as she pulled out from an intersection. His sons Beau(2) and Hunter(3) survived the accident and were taken to the hospital in fair condition, Beau with a broken leg and other wounds and Hunter with a minor skull fracture and other head injuries.
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In January 1973, secretary of the Senate Francis R. Valero swore Biden in at the Delaware Division of the Wilmington Medical Center. Present were his sons Beau (whose leg was still in traction from the automobile accident) and Hunter and other family members. At 30, he was the sixth-youngest senator in U.S. history.
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During his early years in the Senate, Biden focused on consumer protection and environmental issues and called for greater government accountability.[83] In a 1974 interview, he described himself as liberal on civil rights and liberties, senior citizens' concerns and healthcare but conservative on other issues, including abortion and military conscription.
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In his first decade in the Senate, Biden focused on arms control. After Congress failed to ratify the SALT II Treaty signed in 1979 by Soviet general secretary Leonid Brezhnev and President Jimmy Carter, Biden met with Soviet Foreign Minister Andrei Gromyko to communicate American concerns and secured changes that addressed the Senate Foreign Relations Committee's objections.
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When the Reagan administration wanted to interpret the 1972 SALT I treaty loosely to allow development of the Strategic Defense Initiative, Biden argued for strict adherence to the treaty. He received considerable attention when he excoriated Secretary of State George Shultz at a Senate hearing for the Reagan administration's support of South Africa despite its continued policy of apartheid
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Biden formally declared his candidacy for the 1988 Democratic presidential nomination on June 9, 1987. He was considered a strong candidate because of his moderate image, his speaking ability, his high profile as chair of the Senate Judiciary Committee at the upcoming Robert Bork Supreme Court nomination hearings, and his appeal to Baby Boomers; he would have been the second-youngest person elected president, after John F. Kennedy.
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Biden became interested in the Yugoslav Wars after hearing about Serb abuses during the Croatian War of Independence in 1991. Once the Bosnian War broke out, Biden was among the first to call for the "lift and strike" policy of lifting the arms embargo, training Bosnian Muslims and supporting them with NATO air strikes, and investigating war crimes.
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In October 2010, Biden said Obama had asked him to remain as his running mate for the 2012 presidential election, but with Obama's popularity on the decline, White House Chief of Staff William M. Daley conducted some secret polling and focus group research in late 2011 on the idea of replacing Biden on the ticket with Hillary Clinton. The notion was dropped when the results showed no appreciable improvement for Obama, and White House officials later said Obama had never entertained the idea.
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The Obama campaign nevertheless valued Biden as a retail-level politician who could connect with disaffected blue-collar workers and rural residents, and he had a heavy schedule of appearances in swing states as the reelection campaign began in earnest in spring 2012.
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An August 2012 remark before a mixed-race audience that Republican proposals to relax Wall Street regulations would "put y'all back in chains" led to a similar analysis of Biden's face-to-face campaigning abilities versus his tendency to go off track. The Los Angeles Times wrote, "Most candidates give the same stump speech over and over, putting reporters if not the audience to sleep.
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The Los Angeles Times wrote, "Most candidates give the same stump speech over and over, putting reporters if not the audience to sleep. But during any Biden speech, there might be a dozen moments to make press handlers cringe, and prompt reporters to turn to each other with amusement and confusion." Time magazine wrote that Biden often went too far and "Along with the familiar Washington mix of neediness and overconfidence, Biden's brain is wired for more than the usual amount of goofiness."
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As of September 11, 2015, Biden was still uncertain about running. He cited his son's recent death as a large drain on his emotional energy, and said, "nobody has a right to seek that office unless they're willing to give it 110% of who they are." On October 21, speaking from a podium in the Rose Garden with his wife and Obama by his side, Biden announced his decision not to run for president in 2016.
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In January 2016, Biden affirmed that it was the right decision, but admitted to regretting not running for president "every day". After Obama endorsed Hillary Clinton on June 9, 2016, Biden endorsed her later that day. Throughout the 2016 election, Biden strongly criticized Clinton's opponent, Donald Trump, in often colorful terms.
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After leaving the vice presidency, Biden became a professor at the University of Pennsylvania, while continuing to lead efforts to find treatments for cancer. In 2017 he wrote a memoir, Promise Me, Dad, and went on a book tour. Biden earned $15.6 million in 2017–2018.In 2018, he gave a eulogy for Senator John McCain, praising McCain's embrace of American ideals and bipartisan friendships.
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In September 2019, it was reported that Trump had pressured Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zaleski to investigate alleged wrongdoing by Biden and his son Hunter Biden. Despite the allegations, as of September 2019, no evidence has been produced of any wrongdoing by the Biden. The media widely interpreted this pressure to investigate the Biden's as trying to hurt Biden's chances of winning the presidency, resulting in a political scandal and Trump's impeachment by the House of Representatives.
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In late March 2020, Tara Reade, one of the eight women who previously accused Biden of inappropriate physical contact, made a new allegation against Biden, accusing him of a 1993 sexual assault. There were inconsistences between Reade's 2019 and 2020 allegations. Biden and his campaign vehemently denied the sexual assault allegation.
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When Sanders suspended his campaign on April 8, 2020, Biden became the Democratic Party's presumptive nominee for president. On April 13, Sanders endorsed Biden in a live-streamed discussion from their homes. Former President Barack Obama endorsed Biden the next day. In March 2020, Biden committed to choosing a woman as his running mate. In June, Biden met the 1,991-delegate threshold needed to secure the party's presidential nomination.
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On August 11, he announced U.S. Senator Kamala Harris of California as his running mate, making her the first African American and first South Asian American vice-presidential nominee on a major-party ticket.
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In his first two weeks in office, Biden signed more executive orders than any other president since Franklin D. Roosevelt had in their first month in office.
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In his first two days as president, Biden signed 17 executive orders, more than most recent presidents did in their first 100 days. By his third day, orders had included rejoining the Paris Climate Agreement, ending the state of national emergency at the border with Mexico, directing the government to rejoin the WHO, face mask requirements on federal property, measures to combat hunger in the United States, and revoking permits for the construction of the Keystone XL pipeline.