Delaware's own Joe Biden drops out of presidential race, citing 'best interest' of country

Joseph Robinette Biden Jr., the 46th president of the United States and highest U.S. political office holder in Delaware history, announced Sunday that he will withdraw his bid for reelection.

The announcement comes after a growing chorus of calls for the president to step down as he otherwise remained resolute about staying in the race, as well as three weeks after a debate that left allies, donors and Americans unsure about the president's fitness for another term.

"It has been the greatest honor of my life to serve as your President," Biden said in a written statement. "And while it has been my intention to seek reelection, I believe it is in the best interest of my party and my country for me to stand down and to focus solely on my duties as President for the rest of my term."

He quickly threw his endorsement behind Vice President Kamala Harris in a separate announcement shortly after the publication of his full letter on X.

The winding political ascent of Delaware’s best-known and adopted political son to the Oval Office started with a New Castle County Council win in 1970, a rare Democrat win that year, which took only 10,573 votes to secure.

In what is now his final campaign, he earned more than 76 million votes nationwide to defeat Donald Trump in 2020 to win the presidency, the most ever in American history. He is also the oldest president in the nation's history.

An influential U.S. senator for 36 years before serving two terms as vice president beside Barack Obama, the country’s first Black president, he twice ran for president and failed before he finally found success against Trump.

It was fitting that the 2020 election, reshaped by COVID-19, forced the Biden campaign to headquarter in Delaware, nearly making the state an unofficial running mate.

Vice President Kamala Harris's official unveiling was at A.I. du Pont High School in Greenville, Biden met with community and religious leaders in the wake of George Floyd's killing at Wilmington's Bethel AME Church, and the Democratic National Convention abandoned Milwaukee for the Chase Center on the Riverfront in Wilmington. In between were Wilmington campaign events at The Queen, Delaware Museum of Natural History, William "Hicks" Anderson Community Center and the Hotel du Pont.

Ten years earlier, Wilmington was also where then-President-elect Obama picked up Biden on a whistle-stop train tour in 2009, en route to the inauguration in Washington.

It was as vice president alongside Obama when Biden and his oversized personality first found widespread fame outside of the world of politics.

Part of Biden's charm is his Everyman demeanor and not just because of his glad-handing or gift of gab.

It is also for decisions like having the U.S. Secret Service hang back when he made his rounds at hometown spots like a Capriotti’s sandwich shop, Happy Harry’s pharmacy, Brew HaHa! coffeehouse or University of Delaware football games as vice president, so as not to make them an “embarrassing” event.

Biden (finally) wins the White House

When Biden lifted his right hand for the oath of office and said, "I do solemnly swear," he was also marking his sixth decade in politics.

At 78, he was the oldest person ever to be sworn in and arguably the most prepared, given his experience.

After eight years as Obama’s No. 2 and “the last guy in the room” for every major decision Obama made, he finally shook Obama's long shadow when he became the man to beat Trump.

It started with him beating out nearly 30 fellow Democratic candidates in the primary, the largest field in decades, after jumping into the race late, declaring in March 2019. In the end, Biden became the presumptive nominee when Sen. Bernie Sanders, the last candidate in the race, suspended his campaign in April 2020.

The key to Biden's win came in South Carolina where he won nearly 50% of the vote, buoyed by the endorsement of Rep. Jim Clyburn. Even though Biden had won the Iowa caucus, his South Carolina win came after Sanders won both New Hampshire and Nevada.

By June, Biden passed the threshold of 1,991 delegates to win his party's nomination and made Delaware history as the first Delawarean to be nominated for president.

In the general election, Biden never trailed Trump, breaking open a double-digit lead nationally down the stretch after Trump's heckling performance in the first debate.

While the election was not called on election night due to tight races, Biden passed 270 electoral votes four days later, setting off celebrations nationwide and across Delaware. Backyard fireworks were blasting in the city at the same time as fireworks and a drone-assisted light show lit up the Riverfront as Biden, Harris and their families basked in victory.

Biden's busy term

When Biden was sworn in at the U.S. Capitol, it was 14 days after the Jan. 6 insurrection when thousands of Trump supporters stormed the seat of the nation's legislative branch, assaulted police officers and caused lawmakers to flee. While the attack delayed the joint session of Congress to officially certify the election, legislators reconvened that night to finish the job.

Biden's time in office began with a flurry of executive orders, many of which reversed Trump-era orders with the United States rejoining the Paris Climate Agreement and the World Health Organization.

He marked the one-year anniversary of COVID-19 by signing his $1.9 trillion American Rescue Plan Act into law, the economic stimulus relief package that included direct payments to Americans, as well as an extension of increased unemployment benefits.

Five months later, the $1 trillion bipartisan infrastructure bill became law with his signature, and in August 2022, the $750 billion Inflation Reduction Act did the same – a smaller version of Biden's proposed $3.5 trillion Build Back Better Act.

Early in his term, Biden's popularity hit a high of nearly 55%, but the chaotic withdrawal from Afghanistan in August 2021 hastened his already-slow decline in popularity. Televised scenes showed Afghans running alongside American planes transporting some of the more than 120,000 Americans and Afghans from the Kabul airport to safety as the country quickly fell into Taliban hands.

A suicide bombing at the airport during the "messy" withdrawal, as Biden himself called it, killed 13 American service members and about 170 Afghans, sparking criticism from nearly all quarters.

That's when his approval numbers went underwater, hitting a low of 57% disapproval by July 2022 as the country struggled with high inflation and fuel prices as global supply chain problems due to the pandemic and Russia's invasion of Ukraine both hindered U.S. economic recovery.

Among the highlights of his first term so far was uniting NATO and other nations against Russia's war, the confirmation of U.S. Supreme Court associate justice Ketanji Brown Jackson following Stephen Breyer's retirement and the successful targeting and killing of Al-Qaida leader and Sept. 11 attack planner Ayman al-Zawahir and ISIS leader Abu Ibrahim al-Hashimi in separate strikes.

Controversies, dissent

The final year of Biden's term has been rife with growing dissent across the country, with protests surging in reaction to the president's responses — and nonresponses — to wars overseas.

Many have criticized his support of Israel in the midst of a worsening humanitarian crisis in Gaza, sparking a wave of protests at college campuses across the country in the spring. Biden announced a cease-fire proposal supported by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in June, calling for a truce between Israel and Hamas after nine months of fighting.

The conflict in Palestine was not the only war to characterize Biden's presidency. Since Russia's invasion of Ukraine in 2022, the president and his administration have been staunch supporters of Ukraine, approving billions of dollars in aid. The continued support has drawn criticism from some, who argue that the U.S. should not be investing as much in an outside war.

Critical attention has also come to Biden and his family closer to their home in Delaware, as the president's son Hunter Biden became the first child of a sitting president tried for a crime. A jury of Delawareans determined on June 11 that Hunter Biden committed three felonies when he purchased a gun while actively using drugs. He faces a maximum of 25 years in prison.

While the president himself was not involved in the crimes or the trial, many of those opposed to him linked the guilty verdict to him and his administration. Biden said he supported his son in his recovery, but said following the verdict that he would not pardon or commute any sentence given to Hunter Biden.

Throughout his time in The White House, Biden has never been far from home after famously riding Amtrak home from Washington, D.C., nightly as a U.S. Senator. He often vacations at his Henlopen Acres summer house near Rehoboth Beach and comes home often to Greenville where he has been seen taking in a grandchild's game at Sanford School, grabbing a cup of coffee at Brew HaHa! or attending church at St. Joseph on the Brandywine. And whether in Greenville or at the beaches, the Bidens are often seen enjoying their favorite restaurants.

The temporary traffic back-ups caused by his motorcade during home state visits have earned a shorthand nickname from many Delawareans, "Joe jams."

Heartbreak in '72

Biden's adult life has been book-ended by family tragedy, starting with the unthinkable in 1972 when his wife of six years, Neilia, and 13-month-old daughter Naomi were killed in a car crash that also injured sons Hunter and Beau.

The accident came a little more than a month after Biden, then 29, scored a major upset against Republican incumbent Sen. J. Caleb Boggs, a statewide officeholder for 26 years. Biden had become the fifth-youngest U.S. Senator in history.

It was Dec. 18, 1972 — seven days before Christmas — when the family’s Chevrolet station wagon collided with a tractor-trailer loaded with corncobs at the intersection of Limestone and Valley roads in Hockessin, not far from where the Hockessin Athletic Club now stands.

Heartbreaking photos by News Journal photographer Fred Comegys from the accident scene showed the devastation.

Biden was in Washington, D.C., interviewing possible staffers when the crash occurred. Neilia was supposed to join him in the nation’s capital the next day to finalize the purchase of a home there. He immediately flew home on a rented plane and went straight to the hospital.

She was 30. Biden had celebrated his own 30th birthday a month prior.

With his sons hospitalized, Biden wasn’t expected at the memorial service for Neilia and little Naomi. But he attended, staring down unspeakable grief as he stood beside the colorful stained-glass windows of St. Mary Magdalen Catholic Church on Concord Pike in Talleyville.

In front of a crowd of 650, he spoke candidly about his “two girls.”

Only 18 days after the accident, Biden became a U.S. senator.

Instead of the hallowed halls of the U.S. Capitol, Biden placed his left hand on a bible held by Neilia’s father Robert Hunter and raised his right in the chapel of Wilmington Hospital, then called Delaware Division.

It was after that devastation that Biden decided to remain home in Wilmington and commute daily to Washington on Amtrak, which he continued to do until he joined Obama in D.C. in 2009. That’s when he moved into the official vice-presidential residence at Number One Observatory Circle, still visiting his home state on a regular basis as vice president.

In his 2008 book “Promises to Keep,” he detailed the harrowing time, saying he could understand how deep despair could lead some to “just cash it in” and how “suicide wasn’t just an option, but a rational option.”

He re-married in 1977 to Jill Biden and the couple had one child, Ashley, in 1981.

Another familial heartbreak

Forty-two years after the death of Neilia and Naomi, Delaware would once again grieve alongside Biden when Beau, then 46, succumbed to an aggressive brain tumor.

The May 2015 death of the Delaware Army National Guard major and former state attorney general who had announced he was going to run to be Delaware’s 74th governor dealt Biden another tragedy to overcome with the world watching.

Biden himself had a pair of cranial aneurysms in 1988, the first of which was near-fatal. He underwent a pair of surgeries that year to repair the damage.

Beau was 46 when he died. And when Biden's win made him the 46th president, noting the coincidence was unavoidable.

Biden rises in the Senate, joins Obama

In the years between his twin family tragedies, Biden rose to become one of the most influential senators on Capitol Hill, chairing a pair of powerful committees, including the Senate Foreign Relations Committee (2001–2003 and 2007–2009) and the Senate Judiciary Committee (1987–1995).

During that time, he pushed for NATO intervention in the Bosnian War in the mid-1990s, which was marked by ethnic cleansing and genocide. The intervention led to a 1995 peace agreement and the prosecution of war crimes.

In 1994, he also pushed the passage of both the largest crime bill in U.S. history and the $1.6 billion Violence Against Women Act, which he had drafted. In 1997, he helped negotiate a chemical weapons ban.

Those years left Biden on a first-name basis with every American politician of note, along with nearly every world leader, eventually placing the self-described “workhorse, not a show horse” in prime position to be picked by the much more inexperienced Obama.

He was a foreign policy wonk.

On August 23, 2008, Biden was announced officially as Obama’s running mate as national media camped outside his Greenville home on Barley Mill Road. It was a momentous moment of redemption for the two-time presidential election loser, but also a gleaming moment of pride for Delaware with both state Democrats and Republicans cheering his pick.

Biden’s years of watching Washington, D.C., from the inside, combined with his blue-collar appeal and sturdy campaign skills, helped Obama make history with Biden’s "white hair waving like a flag of experience," The News Journal wrote at the time.

The workhorse was in full stride during the campaign against Sen. John McCain and Alaskan Gov. Sarah Palin in the 74 days between his selection and Election Day.

He led about 90 rallies and fundraisers as he crisscrossed the country stumping everywhere from ice cream stands and burger joints to college gymnasiums and retirement villages, visiting more than 20 states and doing more than 200 media interviews.

During his time representing The First State, he never faced a serious threat of being voted out. Not in 1978, 1984, 1990, 1996, 2002 or 2008. He garnered between 58 to 63 percent of the vote in each re-election race, a testament to his durable statewide support.

As Biden campaigned with Obama in 2008, Carol E. Hoffecker, a Delaware historian and author of “Democracy in Delaware,” placed Biden’s position in state history thusly: “No one else except Caesar Rodney, who was there at the founding of the nation, is historically more significant than Joe Biden.”

With his election as president of the United States, Biden's place atop Delaware history was unofficially enshrined.

Vice President Biden as 'last one in the room'

After the pair defeated McCain and Palin on Nov. 5, 2008, Obama’s East Coast whistle-stop tour in a 1930 Pullman car en route to the inauguration in Washington, D.C., pulled into Wilmington Train Station. Two years later, it would be renamed the Joseph R. Biden Jr. Railroad Station.

Thousands swarmed the train on that 19-degree day to send off the state’s most favored son, along with the president-elect.

Biden repeated his well-known line, “When I die, Delaware will be written on my heart,” to the cheering crowd.

Three days later, Supreme Court Justice John Paul Stevens was swearing Biden in as 1.8 million people, the largest inauguration crowd in American history, looked on in freezing temperatures.

Biden reveled in his active role in the administration. He oversaw the 2009 economic stimulus and the draw-down of troops in Iraq in 2010 while also negotiating down-to-the-wire fiscal agreements.

Some historians rank Biden among the most active American vice presidents. In 2012, The Atlantic magazine published a story headlined: "Joe Biden: The Most Influential Vice President in History?"

Biden’s policy choices have subjected him to criticism. In particular, some hawkish foreign policy leaders criticized what they saw as Biden’s lack of faith in the military. Former Defense Secretary Robert Gates wrote Biden had been wrong about “nearly every major foreign policy and national security issue over the past four decades.”

Biden argued against the now-legendary raid that killed Osama Bin Laden in Pakistan. He opposed the military’s call for a surge of new troops in Iraq in 2007, as well as a similar surge in Afghanistan in 2012.

In Biden’s final days as vice president, Obama shocked the 36-year public servant in the White House’s State Dining Room with the nation’s highest civilian honor, the Presidential Medal of Freedom.

"For your faith in your fellow Americans, for your love of country and for your lifetime of service that will endure through the generations, I'd like to ask the military aide to join us on stage," Obama said, revealing the surprise honor.

With swollen eyes, Biden accepted, turning his back to the crowd to regain his composure while wiping away tears: “I don't deserve this, but I know it came from the president's heart.”

A month prior, Democrats and Republicans in the U.S. Senate paid tribute to him on the Senate floor as an emotional Biden looked on from the presiding officer's chair. The tributes were scheduled to last an hour, but it went on for more than two.

"There's a reason 'Get Joe on the phone' is shorthand for 'time to get serious' in my office," Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky said.

Biden's stumbles

For all his accomplishments and honors, Biden has not been without faults and missteps.

His failed 1988 presidential campaign was torpedoed by plagiarism accusations after he failed to credit a speech by British politician Neil Kinnock at an August Democratic debate at the Iowa State Fair. (He had cited Kinnock in previous speeches.)

Three years later, when Biden was chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee during the Supreme Court confirmation hearings of Clarence Thomas, he presided over Anita Hill’s testimony detailing her accusations of sexual harassment against the judge.

Critics, especially in later years and even more so in the wake of the #MeToo movement, blamed him for the accusatory and suspicious tone of Hill’s questioning by the panel of 14 male senators. Biden has since said he owed Hill an apology, adding that he believed her.

Nearly 30 years later, Hill would support Biden's candidacy against Trump "notwithstanding all of his limitations in the past, and the mistakes that he made in the past."

That same famously loose mouth, which political opponents used to paint him as a buffoon, also could be used to his advantage.

Like in 2007, at a Democratic debate, when he said Republican presidential candidate and former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani only mentions three things in a sentence: “a noun, a verb and 9/11."

Like in 1988, he lost the 2008 presidential primary as well. It was won by his future boss, Obama.

After 2½ months of campaigning in Iowa to meet a presumably attainable goal of a third or fourth-place finish against a field of six, he was trounced.

Biden finished fifth with less than 1 percent of the vote behind Obama, former vice-presidential candidate John Edwards, Clinton and New Mexico Governor Bill Richardson.

It was a devastating blow and it was written on the faces of his family who stood behind him teary-eyed as he announced the end of his campaign that night.

Several months later, at the 2008 Democratic National Convention in Denver after Obama selected him as running mate, he said, "Failure at some point in your life is inevitable, but giving up is unforgivable."

From Scranton to Claymont

Biden was born in 1942 in the industrial Scranton, the first of four children for Jean and Joe Biden, a car dealership manager. Biden was 11 when the family moved 135 miles south to Claymont, another blue-collar town just over the state line.

After living in an apartment in the Brookview neighborhood off Philadelphia Pike, the family moved to a spilt-level home in Brandywine Hundred. It was there that he overcame the stutter that earned him the callous nickname of “Joe Impedimenta,” as he wrote in “Promises to Keep.”

“I was going to beat the stutter. And I went at it the only way I knew how: I worked like hell. Practice, practice, practice. I would memorize long passages of Yeats and Emerson, then stand in front of the mirror in my room on Wilson Road and talk, talk, talk,” wrote Biden, whose encouraging father called him “Champ.”

After graduating from Archmere Academy in Claymont, Biden became a true Blue Hen,  earning a bachelor’s degree at the University of Delaware, double majoring in history and political science.

After meeting Neilia while on spring break in the Bahamas in 1964, the two began dating. She attended Syracuse University and that is where he would go to get his law degree, graduating in 1968, two years after they married in upstate New York.

The Bidens returned to Delaware, where he worked as a law clerk and public defender before starting his own firm, originally called Biden and Walsh.

Biden the underdog

But law was not for the 6-foot former UD football halfback.

By 1969, he was running as a Democrat for a seat on New Castle County Council, winning the seat in a Republican-leaning district. He served for two years before taking on Boggs and the political machine the incumbent had built up over the years as a U.S. representative and two-term Delaware governor.

The underdog campaign lacked the funds and experience to win, most thought. Managed by Biden’s sister Valerie, who would later manage more campaigns and grow into a political confidant, he overcame poor early polls and upended Boggs by 3,000 votes.

A month later, the station wagon holding his family was struck and his Senate career officially began in that Wilmington hospital chapel cramped with media with Senate Secretary Frank Valeo traveling to Delaware from Washington for the swearing-in ceremony.

Pale, but smiling, he became the first U.S. senator in decades to take the oath of office away from the Senate chamber. But he made clear that his surviving family was his priority – a priority that led him to forgo a presidential run in 2016.

“I make this one promise,” he said to the media after the sterile swearing-in. “If in six months or so, there’s a conflict between me being a good father and a good senator … I promise you I will contact [the governor] … and tell him to get another senator.

“[The boys] can’t get another father.”

In the end, he pushed onward, using the advice his own father regularly gave him as a child: “Champ, when you get knocked down, get up.”

Biden captured and re-captured the soul of Delaware every time he got back up, especially when he did it five years after Beau's death to finally win the presidency.

This story includes information and reports from The News Journal archives. Contact Ryan Cormier of The News Journal at rcormier@delawareonline.com or (302) 324-2863. Follow him on Facebook (@ryancormier), Twitter (@ryancormier) and Instagram (@ryancormier).

JOSEPH ROBINETTE BIDEN JR. BIOGRAPHY

Born: Nov. 20, 1942 in Scranton, Pennsylvania

Education: Bachelor's degree from University of Delaware, 1965; law degree from Syracuse University, 1968

Religion: Roman Catholic

Family: Wife, Jill; four children (son Beau died in 2015 and daughter Naomi died in 1972), five grandchildren

Home: Greenville

Career experience: Practicing attorney, 1968-1972; served on New Castle County Council, 1970-1972; elected to the U.S. Senate, 1972; re-elected to the U.S. Senate, 1978, 1984, 1990, 1996 and in 2002 for the term ending Jan. 3. 2009. Elected as vice president of the United States in 2008, serving from 2009 to 2017. Elected president in 2020.

U.S. Senate committees: Chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee from 2001–2003 and 2007–2009 and the Senate Judiciary Committee from 1987–1995.

This article originally appeared on Delaware News Journal: President Joe Biden suspends bid for reelection