Joe Biden was born on November 20, 1942. He is an American politician who served as the 47th Vice President of the United States from 2009 to 2017. A member of the Democratic Party, he served as a United States Senator from Delaware from 1973 to 2009. Biden was the Democratic presidential candidate in the 2020 election, running against the incumbent, Donald Trump.
Biden was raised in Scranton, Pennsylvania, and New Castle County, Delaware. He studied at the University of Delaware before earning his law degree from Syracuse University. He became a lawyer in 1969 and was elected to the New Castle County Council in 1970. In 1972, he was elected to the U.S. Senate from Delaware, becoming the sixth-youngest senator in U.S. history. He was a longtime member and eventually chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. He opposed the Gulf War in 1991 but supported NATO expansion into Eastern Europe and its intervention in the Yugoslav Wars during the 1990s.
He supported the resolution authorizing the Iraq War in 2002 but opposed the U.S. troop surge in 2007. He also served as chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee from 1987 to 1995, focusing on drug policy, crime prevention, and civil liberties. Biden led efforts to pass the Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act and the Violence Against Women Act. He also oversaw the controversial Supreme Court nominations of Robert Bork and Clarence Thomas. Biden ran unsuccessfully for the Democratic presidential nomination in both 1988 and 2008.
He was reelected to the Senate six times and was the fourth most senior senator when he resigned to become Vice President alongside Barack Obama after the 2008 election. Obama and Biden were reelected in 2012. As Vice President, Biden oversaw infrastructure spending in 2009 to counter the Great Recession. His negotiations with congressional Republicans helped the Obama administration pass several key pieces of legislation, including the 2010 Tax Relief Act, the 2011 Budget Control Act, and the 2012 American Taxpayer Relief Act.
In foreign policy, he led efforts to pass the new START treaty between the United States and Russia, supported military intervention in Libya, and helped shape U.S. policy toward Iraq, including the withdrawal of American troops in 2011. After the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting, Biden led the Gun Violence Task Force, created to address the causes of gun violence in the United States.
In October 2015, he announced he would not run for president in the 2016 election. In January 2017, President Obama awarded him the Presidential Medal of Freedom with distinction. Biden announced his candidacy for the 2020 presidential election on April 25, 2019, and in June 2020, he secured the 1,991 delegates required to win the Democratic nomination. On August 11, 2020, he named U.S. Senator Kamala Harris as his running mate.