Joe Biden

America's oldest president.

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“”I know liberals say, 'Don't say Joe Biden is old' — don't say what people see with their own eyes. I know you know how fucking old he is, and I know you don't want to say it because Trump is so scary, but he's so fucking old. When you watch him on television, you're nervous, aren't ya? I'm not saying that Biden can't contribute to society, he just shouldn't be president.

—Jon Stewart, May 2024.

Joseph Robinette "Big Fucking Deal" Biden, Jr. (also known as Sleepy Joe, Dark Brandon, and Genocide Joe) (1942–) is a very elder statesman from the Democratic Party serving as the forty-sixth President of the United States, having been elected to set the country back on the right track after the disastrous term of his predecessor Donald Trump. He is only the second Catholic president in US history, after John F. Kennedy.

While he had some notable achievements (such as signing the American Rescue Plan, ending the Afghanistan War, implementing pro-labor policies, protecting the environment, tackling climate change, and effectively ending drone warfare), post-COVID economic troubles and persistent inflation troubled his administration, and his enabling of Israel's atrocity-laden conduct in its war against the Gaza Strip further eroded support from much of the Democratic base, especially from younger and minority voters. His approval rating tanked in mid-2021 and never recovered, even as Biden's party fared historically well in the 2022 midterms. He also struggled against questions about his fitness for office and the inherent difficulty in convincing American public that he should serve a second term that he would have finished at age 86. Ultimately, a disastrous debate performance in 2024 led to the age problem taking the forefront of political discourse, and Biden eventually withdrew from the race on 21 July 2024. Biden was the first incumbent president since Lyndon B. Johnson in 1968 to withdraw from the race, the first since the 19th century to withdraw after serving only one term, and the first ever to withdraw after already winning his party's primaries.

Before taking the White House, Biden served as a Senator from Delaware and then vice president and important negotiator for Barack Obama. He retired from politics for a while after his son Joseph "Beau" Biden III died from brain cancer in 2015, but Joe reemerged from the ground like a zombie during the 2020 Democratic Party presidential nomination. He began as the front-runner but almost managed to fuck it up for himself by fumbling debates and losing early elections. Still, he regained his footing thanks to winning significantly in the South and convincing other establishment candidates to withdraw from the race to back him against populist senator Bernie Sanders. Ultimately, Joe Biden benefited from his name-recognition in connection to former President Obama as well as Sanders' tendency to overestimate his reach outside of the progressive core base. However, there was definite voter suppression from the Republican party involved in a lot of cases.

During the campaign for the 2020 U.S. presidential election against incumbent Donald Trump, Biden and his team generally focused on targeting centrist swing voters while pushing back against more progressive policies. Biden also generally limited large-scale campaign events, both due to the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic as well as his contentment to just sit on his consistently higher poll numbers and wait out the race. Biden won a clear majority of electoral votes thanks to reclaiming the Rust Belt states Trump flipped in 2016, but unlike Trump, his victory did not translate into down-ballot victories for other Democrats. Trump refused to concede and decided to launch numerous ill-concieved legal challenges, at which piont most of his legal team (notably excepting Rudy Giuliani) said "fuck you" and left. In a last act of desperation, Trump staged an attempted self-coup, which Biden condemned as "one of the darkest days" in US history.

Fun fact: Biden is now the best President from Pennsylvania despite various setbacks during his term, purely because his competition is James Buchanan — and it's impossible to top that trainwreck.

Political career

Freshman Senator Biden.

Joe Biden's political career has been built up by two rather stunning successes, preceded by remarkable incompetence, embarrassing gaffes, and failures.

1972 run for Senate

In 1972, Biden pulled off an astonishing victory against an incumbent politician at age 29 while having to use relatively limited resources. J. Caleb Boggs was considered a popular incumbent, and the Delaware Democratic Party picked their most unknown politician (he was only a member of the New Castle County Council) to serve as the sacrificial lamb against Boggs in the election. Since the Dems had no real hope of winning, they gave him almost no money and no manpower. Biden instead relied on friends and family members to deliver platform pamphlets by hand, which was only possible in a small state like Delaware.

Biden won the race very narrowly, due to offering himself as the candidate of the modern era while attacking Boggs as a crusty, out-of-touch old man. He presented Boggs's continuous civil rights support and past poll tax opposition as out-of-touch in an ad, appealing to Delaware's then-status as a de facto segregated society:

“”To Cale Boggs an unfair tax was the 1948 poll tax. To Joe Biden an unfair tax is the 1972 income tax.

Biden also campaigned against the Vietnam War and criticized Boggs for failing to pressure the rather corrupt and unpopular president Richard Nixon into ending it. Biden defeated Boggs by a little over 3,000 votes.

Unfortunately, his victory was marred by tragedy when his wife Neilia Hunter and infant daughter Naomi perished in a car accident a little over a month after the election while out to buy a Christmas tree. Biden's sons Beau and Hunter survived, albeit with serious injuries.

In the Senate

Senator Biden and his second wife Jill.

See the main article on this topic: US Senate

Amtrak Joe

See the main article on this topic: Amtrak

In the Senate, Joe shaped much of his political image around his family and especially public transportation. With his wife and daughter dead after the accident in 1972, Biden took the train daily from Wilmington, Delaware, to Washington and then back again to be home with his two young sons. It was a nice gesture, but it also served Biden's political career by establishing him as an "everyman". In his first term as senator, Biden said that he was angry and had trouble focusing due to his personal tragedy. However, Biden also met English teacher and divorcee, Jill Jacobs, during this time and eventually married her in 1977.

As a frequent rider on Amtrak, it should come as no surprise that Biden is a fan of rail as a mode of transportation, and he has consequently been called "railfan in chief" and "Amtrak Joe" among other things. The Obama administration's ambitious high-speed rail plan unveiled in 2009 is believed to be mostly thanks to his influence. When a train derailed on the Northeast Corridor, a visibly shaken Biden told the media that he had been on the same route numerous times and that more investments in Amtrak are needed now more than ever. The Republicans, of course, voted to cut Amtrak funding on the very same day.

Officer Joe

Biden with Ronald Reagan in the Oval Office, 1984.

“”Every time Richard Nixon, when he was running in 1972, would say, 'Law and order,' the Democratic match or response was, 'Law and order with justice' — whatever that meant. And I would say, 'Lock the SOBs up.'

—Joe Biden in 1993.

“”The truth is, every major crime bill since 1976 that’s come out of this Congress, every minor crime bill, has had the name of the Democratic senator from the State of Delaware: Joe Biden.

—Joe Biden, speech to the Senate in 1994.

One of the worst aspects of his political career was one common to Democrats of the era, as they tried to shake off their perception of being "soft on crime" by pushing for mass incarceration. Biden was a ranking member on the Senate Judiciary Committee by the 1980s, and he used that position to push for a harsher War on Drugs and harsher prison sentencing. He was such a hardass that freaking Ronald Reagan actually vetoed a Biden-written bill that called for more funding to build lots more prisons. Biden also cooperated heavily with Dixiecrat Strom Thurmond to jail more people.

Crime legislation written, sponsored, or campaigned for by Biden include:

• The Comprehensive Crime Control Act of 1984, which established mandatory minimum sentencing rules for drug-related offenses. It also greatly expanded powers of civil asset forfeiture.
• The Anti-Drug Abuse Act of 1986, which further strengthened prison sentences for drug possession. It also imposed harsher penalties for crack than for powder cocaine, leading to greater racial disparities in prison populations.
• The Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act of 1994, Biden's most infamous crime legislation, imposed tougher sentencing across the board and escalated mass incarceration with devastating impact on black communities.

Officer Biden during the 1994 Crime Bill signing.

However, amid rising crack addiction and violent crime of the era, the 1994 and other crime bills really weren't too controversial at the time, even among African-Americans. However, today, the bill's impacts are more fully understood, and Biden faced tough criticism for the law during the 2020 campaign season. Biden eventually stated that he thinks the bill was a mistake. However, he blames much of it on implementation rather than his actions.

Racial issues and other skeletons in his closet

Alongside being a crusader for mass incarceration, Joe Biden's early Senate record was pretty rough on racial issues. Biden, for instance, has long boasted about his friendly personal relationship with the infamous segregationist Strom Thurmond. This was to highlight his bipartisanship, but in modern times it looks pretty fucking bad to have been pals with the guy who gave a filibuster speech against civil rights legislation in 1957 for 24 hours straight.

Furthermore, Biden supported legislation that would have prevented federal courts from ordering public school busing (a measure to promote racial integration), something for which his future vice president Kamala Harris harshly criticized him in the 2020 presidential debates. In 1975, Joe Biden joined the virulently racist North Carolina senator Jesse Helms in voting against a measure that would have required public schools to provide information on the racial makeup of their student bodies, thereby kneecapping any federal effort to enforce integration. After the Helms proposal failed, Biden then proposed his own budget measure seeking to bar schools from using federal funds to "assign teachers or students to schools … for reasons of race." Some of Biden's Democratic colleagues, such as Senators Warren Magnuson and Scoop Jackson of Washington, Thomas Eagleton and Stuart Symington of Missouri, and Mike Mansfield of Montana, jumped on board this new measure. In the ensuing vote, Biden's anti-integration measure succeeded where Helms' had failed. The NAACP lambasted this result, and the Senate's sole black member (Ed Brooke of Massachusetts) called it the "the greatest symbolic defeat for civil rights since 1964."

Zionist Joe

Joe Biden on the Senate floor, 1986.

Joe Biden was noted throughout his Senate tenure as one of the most pro-Israel elected officials in the entire US. He claims this is a legacy of his father, who he says had a "preoccupation with the Holocaust" and would frequently discuss "how the world stood silently by in the 1930s in the face of Hitler". Seeking to impress this lesson on his children, Biden took all of them on trips to Dachau, a Nazi concentration camp.

In 1973 (the very year he was sworn in), Senator Biden visited Golda Meir, Israel's Prime Minister at the time. He said his main takeaway was a comment she made to him about how Israel's "secret weapon" was that they have "no place else to go." Biden was also close friends with Senator "Scoop" Jackson from Washington, a hawkish Democrat whose staff included future neoconservative figures like Paul Wolfowitz. Biden spoke at Jackson's funeral in 1983, saying Jackson had "changed my whole perspective on an issue that I had up to that point felt not nearly as strongly about, and that was Israel." Senator Jackson had been a major proponent of aiding Israel during the 1973 Yom Kippur War, and he vocally saw Israel as an American outpost in a hostile region.

In 1982, Israeli PM Menachem Begin visited the United States after having ordered the invasion of Lebanon. During a private meeting with US Senators, Begin says he was shocked at Biden's enthusiasm for the military expedition. Begin claimed that Biden "said he would go even further than Israel, adding that he’d forcefully fend off anyone who sought to invade his country, even if that meant killing women or children." This stands in stark contrast to Biden's public statements at the time, which were critical of Israel's actions. Biden did, however, try to dissuade Begin during this conversation from continuing Jewish settlements in occupied Palestine, but only because he feared that the settlements would turn public opinion against Israel.

President Ronald Reagan, on the other hand, was more doveish on the Lebanon invasion, especially after an Israeli air raid on Beirut that killed over 100 people. In a phone call with Begin, Reagan said, "Menachem, this is a holocaust". Yeah, that word came out. Although Begin reacted as poorly to that as you might expect, it only took twenty minutes of Reagan angrily demanding a ceasefire in Beirut before Begin caved. So yes, Reagan was more of a dove on this issue than Biden was.

Biden later went on the record to defend a $3 billion aid package to Israel in 1986, saying "It is the best $3 billion investment we can make. Were there not an Israel, the United States of America would have to invent an Israel to protect her interests in the region".

Borking Joe

As the Chair of the Senate Judiciary Committee, Biden played a vital role in scuttling the wingnut Reagan nominee for the Supreme Court, Robert Bork. Biden's treatment of Bork drew heavy criticism for attacking Bork like a prosecutor to criticize Bork's original-intent judicial philosophy. This was an early sign that Supreme Court nominations would start getting more politically fraught and angry.

The hearing also took place during Biden's infamous failed 1988 presidential run.

1988 run for president

Poor Joe probably doesn't like to see this logo anymore.

“”I think I probably have a much higher IQ than you do.

—Angry Joe Biden after being asked about his law school grades.

Biden's campaign for the Democratic nomination in 1988 was an embarrassment, and it collapsed after just three months. Biden once again played himself as a youth candidate, and he also tried to play up his everyman reputation. That last part killed his campaign. Biden gave a speech referencing his family's old traditional jobs as coal workers in Pennsylvania. Still, his speech very blatantly plagiarized the very similar words of British politician Neil Kinnock. The press jumped on him and questioned his character. Then it got even worse when an old law school paper emerged, which Biden had improperly cited sources and was thus an inadvertent act of plagiarism. This type of "gotcha journalism" had been the rule until the period of the Trump Presidency. Biden then made some misleading statements about his academic successes and, most egregiously, falsely claimed that he had marched with the Civil Rights Movement.

Back to the Senate

Anita Hill testimony to the Senate Judiciary Committee.

No testimony Joe

“”"Have I forgiven Joe Biden? I'm ready to move on, but I am also ready to hold Joe Biden accountable. Accountability means acknowledging your role in a problem and the harm it's caused. Acknowledging that you have culpability.

—Anita Hill, 2019.

In 1991, Biden played an unfortunate role as Chair of the Senate Judiciary Committee in managing the confirmation of Clarence Thomas. As chair, Biden became aware that university law professor Anita Hill had accused Thomas of sexual harassment. During the committee's questioning of Hill, Biden turned the proceedings into a farce. He refused to allow testimony from people who would have corroborated Hill's account, and he allowed his 14 white male colleagues to demonize and bully Hill. Biden also showed that he was more sympathetic to Thomas during his questions, and he allowed Thomas to testify twice while only allowing Hill to testify once.

However, Biden did vote against Thomas' confirmation, but apparently based on legal differences rather than Hill's account. Biden eventually apologized to Hill in 2019, but she says his apology left her unsatisfied and that he had set the stage for Brett Kavanaugh.

No homo Joe

Biden's record on LGBT issues during his time as a senator also drew some harsh criticism during his later political career. For instance, Biden voted for the "don't ask, don't tell" policy, which prohibited openly gay individuals from serving in the US military. The policy also allowed the military to investigate service members if there was "credible" evidence that the individual was gay or lesbian.

Biden also voted for the 1992 "Defense of Marriage Act", although he previously opposed denying same-sex couples benefits. Biden subsequently changed his mind, supporting the law's repeal in 2010 and telling "Meet the Press" in 2012 that he was "comfortable" with marriage equality. DOMA was ruled unconstitutional by the US Supreme Court in the 2015 Obergefell v. Hodges case.

Foreign policy Joe

Biden in Baghdad, 2004.

Biden was a longtime member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee during the '90s and early 2000s. Biden voted against the Gulf War in 1991 and disliked the other Middle Eastern coalition members because they saddled the US with most of the effort. During the Clinton years, though, Biden supported US intervention in the Yugoslav Wars, and he still considers that support a point of pride.

Biden's role in the lead-up to the 2003 Iraq War was where things got terrible. In 2002, Biden ran the Senate Foreign Relations hearing on Iraq's alleged WMD stockpile and made it clear that he wanted the committee to support deposing Saddam Hussein regardless of the facts. He even allowed the egregious lies that Saddam would have nuclear weapons "sometime this decade" and that Iraqis would "welcome the United States as liberators" to go unchallenged. Biden then voted in support of the 2003 invasion, although he later admitted that vote to be a mistake. In 2006 he announced that he wanted to do an imperialist-style carve-up of Iraq into three ethnostates based on the premise that the Iraqis couldn't handle living in the same country. On the plus side, he voted against the 2007 troop surge. Not too much war.

Biden's later claims that he opposed the war from the beginning are blatantly false.

2008 run for president

Biden's ugly campaign logo. Ugh, the font choice!

“”You've got the first sort of mainstream African American who is articulate and bright and clean and nice looking guy. I mean, that's a storybook man.

—Joe Biden referring to Barack Obama in 2007.

Biden's second failed attempt at the White House was a miserable failure but less so than in 1988. One of his worst moments in the race came from the above quote about Barack Obama, which implicitly insulted African-Americans with faint praise for Obama. The comment was, like many others Biden would make, racially insensitive. He also struggled to explain a comment he made about the rising Indian-American population in Delaware, having stated, "you cannot go to a 7-Eleven or a Dunkin' Donuts unless you have a slight Indian accent." During his campaign, Biden focused on his superior foreign policy experience compared to the other candidates, although much of that foreign policy experience was not good.

The worst part was that Biden failed to attract name recognition, and by this point, he was seen as an old man concerned with old issues. He struggled to fundraise or attract people to his rallies. Much of his failure can be attributed to the fact that Biden was overshadowed by the much more famous Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama. In the Iowa Caucus, Biden received less than 1% of the state's support.

Obama ultimately picked Joe Biden as his running mate, partly because of their personal rapport but mostly because Biden would reassure voters who were worried about Obama's relative lack of government experience. Biden at this time was in support for abortion rights, and his role in the national race caused him to conflict with Catholic clergy in Pennsylvania. Obama and Biden won the 2008 election in a landslide.

Vice President Joe

Obama and Biden in Springfield, Illinois.

Obama's decision to pick Biden as his VP effectively saved Biden's career from political obscurity. Obama and Biden served as senators together on the Foreign Relations Committee, and the two men had initially disliked like each other since Biden resented Obama's fame, and Obama saw Biden as patronizing. They only warmed up to each other on the 2008 primary campaign trail, as Obama liked Biden's appeals to the working class.

Biden's toughest job as VP was learning how to be deferential to Barack Obama, but he did prove loyal. From the outset, he was the primary architect of the Obama policy towards Iraq. Obama and other administration members described Biden as the "devil's advocate" who would force them to defend their positions and decisions. He repeatedly visited Iraq, explaining what steps would need to be taken before the US would withdraw, and simultaneously warning the Iraqis that the US would back away regardless if the Iraqi government allowed their country to descend into a sectarian civil war. Biden was also known for being the most skeptical voice within the administration against Secretary Clinton's plan to increase troop levels in Afghanistan in 2009.

After the Democratic Party's disastrous losses in the 2010 midterm elections, Biden's relationships with his former Senate colleagues became vital to keeping the administration's agenda alive. In 2011, Biden cooperated with Mitch McConnell in the Senate to hash out a debt limit deal avoiding a US default at the last moment. Biden and McConnell had served in the Senate together for 25 years.

In May of 2012, right in the middle of the re-election campaign, Biden misspoke (or maybe not), saying that "I am absolutely comfortable with gay marriage." This gaffe forced Obama to have to actually address the gay marriage issue head-on. The President said he had evolved and now accepted gay marriage. This was one of several turning points in the campaign, so thank him for that. (There's some not-entirely-unfounded speculation that Biden's "gaffe" was a trial balloon for a planned announcement by the President: if the media didn't make too much of a fuss about Biden's statement, or made a fuss in a positive direction, it was safe for the Prez to, um, come out.)

The 2016 election

See the main article on this topic: 2016 U.S. presidential election

Joe Biden had long flirted with running for president in 2016 after his boss had been term-limited. Hillary Clinton, on the other hand, also had her eyes on the White House, and she spent much of 2015 planning for a campaign against him in the primaries. The two had notable differences, with Clinton using harsher language against the Republicans and opposing Obama's proposed Trans-Pacific Partnership (a flip-flop). In October 2015, however, Biden announced that he wouldn't run, a decision influenced by the then-recent death of his son Beau. Biden changed his tone in January 2016, stating he regretted the decision "every day", but he acknowledged that it was too late to reenter the race.

Hillary Clinton went on to run a poor campaign and lose the 2016 election to Donald Trump. This would have disastrous consequences for the United States.

2020 run for president

Joe Biden's campaign kickoff rally in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.

See the main article on this topic: 2020 U.S. presidential election

“”Poor kids are just as bright and just as talented as white kids.

—Biden makes a classic gaffe in 2019.

Rough road in the primaries

After four years of failure under Donald Trump, it was time for the 2020 Democratic primaries. This campaign was set to be a busy one, with the Trump administration looking vulnerable after various scandals, a weak midterm performance, and poor handling of COVID-19. Populist Senator Bernie Sanders quickly became a frontrunner in the race, hoping to avenge his 2016 defeat at the hands of Hillary Clinton. Meanwhile, after giving non-committal answers for a number of months, Biden finally tossed his name in on 29 April 2019. He received attention for both his name-recognition and his favorable polls against Trump. Lagging behind were other hopefuls such as Kamala Harris, Elizabeth Warren, and Pete Buttigieg.

Trump immediately considered Biden to be his most likely rival, and on 25 July 2020, Trump made a phone call to the president of Ukraine, Volodymyr Zelenskyy, making it clear that he would only allow more military aid to Ukraine if Zelenskyy publicly opened a criminal corruption investigation into Hunter Biden, who had ties to a Ukrainian energy company. This became public knowledge in late August. Democrats, who controlled the House of Representatives, investigated the issue and passed two articles of impeachment against Trump. While Trump was acquitted by Republican votes in the Senate, the affair gave the impression that Trump considered Biden a threat.

  Joe Biden

  Bernie Sanders

  Pete Buttigieg

  Michael Bloomberg (he is on the map; look for American Samoa)

On the other hand, eight women came forward in 2019 to accuse Biden of touching and kissing them inappropriately. The issue attracted some attention, and Biden made an apology video pledging to be "more mindful and respectful of people's personal space." Trump's attempt to capitalize on the issue fell somewhat flat, probably due to the 23 allegations of sexual misconduct against him.

Biden hit another stumble in the first round of primary debates, when Kamala Harris jumped on his time in the Senate opposing busing for school integration. She then added, "it was actually hurtful to hear you talk about the reputations of two United States senators who built their reputations and career on the segregation of race in this country." Looking visibly uncomfortable, Biden struggled to find a counter to the attacks (since there really weren't good ones), and he ended the night looking much weaker than he had.

Another dangerous moment came in late March 2020, when former Senate staffer Tara Reade accused Biden of sexually assaulting her. She had been one of the women who spoke out in 2019, and the media quickly highlighted inconsistencies between her 2019 and 2020 version of events as well as her previous positivity towards Biden.

Bad performances in the critical early Iowa and New Hampshire contests seemed to rob Biden of his momentum, and losing Nevada soon after didn't help matters. As the losses kept coming, the campaign's message shifted to, "nah, we'll turn things around at South Carolina, just wait". Surprisingly, this didn't end up being false hope. Ahead of the South Carolina primary vote, Rep. James Clyburn, the highest ranking Black member of Congress, endorsed Biden. This backing, combined with Biden's history as a loyal VP for Obama, helped Biden sweep the southern states on the power of Black electoral support. Moderate candidates dropped out to back Biden, and this change in momentum convinced Sanders to admit defeat and endorse Biden himself on 7 April.

General election campaign

Campaign logo after selecting Harris as his running mate. Finally one that actually looks good.

Kamala Harris was an early favorite for the VP ticket, as she was a Black woman in a year marked by major Black Lives Matter protests after police unjustly murdered George Floyd and other Black Americans. However, her act of pouncing on Biden for the segregationist skeletons in his closet during the first primary debates left many Biden donors and campaign staff feeling bitter towards her. Biden ended up picking her anyway, partly due to her good relationship with his late son Beau, and partly to put a Black woman against the racial divisiveness of Donald Trump.

Biden's campaign focused on improving federal COVID response, expanding Obamacare, raising the minimum wage, reforming criminal justice, and reversing Donald Trump's immigration policies. However, with COVID rampant and Trump constantly shooting himself in the foot, Biden chose a cautious campaign strategy. He largely eschewed the massive indoor rallies Trump enjoyed, instead opting for smaller socially-distanced events. Despite being the oldest presidential candidate in American history, circumstances forced Biden to run a primarily online campaign, becoming the first presidential candidate to do so. Trump mocked Biden for his lack of in-person campaigning, but an online strategy was a smart way to market a candidate who was just too old to have the stamina for constant rallying and door-knocking. Biden also presented himself as the more empathetic candidate by releasing solemn videos marking COVID death milestones while Trump spent his time golfing. Amid the Black Lives Matter protests, Biden spoke at George Floyd's funeral and knelt with protestors while Trump threatened protesters with "vicious dogs" and "ominous weapons" and said "when the looting starts, the shooting starts."

Result and aftermath

2020 Electoral College result.

The 2020 election saw a sharply increased turnout, and Biden won by making gains with white working-class voters as well as suburban voters. For the first time, Silent Generation and Baby Boomers were less than 50% of the electorate. Trump, for his part, greatly improved his numbers with Hispanic voters, especially in Florida. Biden ultimately returned Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, and Michigan to the Democratic column, and he narrowly flipped the long-Republican states of Georgia and Arizona. Amusingly, Biden won the same share of electoral votes Trump did (306-232), although he actually received more due to faithless electors costing Trump two votes in 2016.

Trump reacted to this about as well as you might expect. He refused to concede, claiming the election had been "stolen" from him through "voter fraud", and he lodged numerous legal challenges. The lawsuits all resulted in dead-ends, and various state recounts confirmed Biden's victory (even adding votes in some cases). In five states, Trump loyalists attempted to send "fake electors" to rig the Electoral College vote (those people were charged with crimes). Trump also made an hour-long phone call to Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger (a Republican), repeating false claims and demanding that Raffensperger "find 11,780 votes, which is one more than we have, because we won this state."

Trump supporters attack the US Capitol to stop the democratic transfer of power.

Events culminated on 6 January 2021, the day Congress was supposed to meet to certify the election results. After unsuccessfully launching a public pressure campaign against his Vice President, Mike Pence, to toss out the votes from swing states during the certifying process (under the theory that Pence could do so in his capacity as President of the Senate), Trump gave a speech to his supporters in Washington DC, saying,

“”All of us here today do not want to see our election victory stolen by emboldened radical-left Democrats, which is what they're doing. And stolen by the fake news media. That's what they’ve done and what they’re doing. We will never give up, we will never concede. It doesn't happen. You don't concede when there's theft involved. Our country has had enough. We will not take it anymore and that's what this is all about. And to use a favorite term that all of you people really came up with: We will stop the steal.

The crowd of Trump supporters immediately thereafter stormed the US Capitol in an attempt to disrupt Congress from tallying Electoral Votes. US elected officials hid under desks and donned gas masks as police failed to barricade the building; a woman rioter was shot during the violence. This was an severe and dangerous challenge to the American democratic transfer of power. During the attack, Biden gave an address calling it, "an unprecedented assault unlike anything we've seen in modern times, an assault on the rule of law."

While some Republicans stood down when Congress reconvened, others still voted to object to the Electoral College votes from certain Biden-won states, although the objections failed to overturn Biden's victory. Joe Biden became president of a deeply broken United States.

President Joe

The Dark Brandon rises.

“”Dark Brandon is real.

—Joe Biden

Although Biden had fulfilled his dream of becoming President, he did so under unfortunate circumstances. His inauguration was shadowed by extensive security measures by the National Guard, pandemic precautions, and a crybaby bitch of a predecessor who refused to attend. The country, meanwhile, suffered from a deep economic recession and the ongoing aftereffects of Donald Trump's four years of failure. This wasn't going to be easy.

Emergency measures

President Biden on the phone in the Oval Office, 2021.

Biden immediately set about signing an onslaught of executive orders to staunch the bleeding. Pandemic-related orders implemented mask mandates, reestablished the Obama-era Directorate for Global Health Security and Biodefense (which had been disestablished by Trump), and halted Trump's process of leaving the World Health Organization (WHO). Biden then instructed the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) to revive the eviction and foreclosure moratoriums that Trump had allowed to expire. He also implemented a pause on student loan payments.

His early executive orders also sought to somewhat right the course on climate change policy by rejoining the Paris Climate Agreement and halting the Keystone XL pipeline construction project. Yet more orders served to shield Dreamers (almost a million undocumented young people who were brought to the country as children) from deportation, end the "Muslim travel ban", and stop construction on the border wall.

On 11 March, Biden signed the colossal $1.9 trillion coronavirus relief package called the American Rescue Plan, which allocated federal funding to vaccines, schools, small businesses, and anti-poverty programs such as an expanded child tax credit. A minimum wage hike to $15 an hour was proposed, Senate parliamentarian Elizabeth MacDonough ruled that the mandate wasn't allowed to be placed in during budget reconciliation (a processed used to expedite budget bills), and Republican support obviously wasn't going to happen.

Civil rights

The White House lit up to celebrate Biden's signing of the Respect for Marriage Act, 2022.

Biden's policies towards the LGBT community went a long way towards rectifying his earlier support for DOMA. One of his earliest actions as president was to sign an executive order reversing Donald Trump's ban on transgender individuals from serving in the US military. On 20 September, 2021, Biden marked the 10th anniversary of the end of "Don't Ask Don't Tell" in the US military and instructed the Department of Veterans Affairs to make former servicemen who had been discharged over homosexuality or HIV status eligible for veterans benefits.

On racial issues, Biden was keen to reward Black Americans for bailing his ass out during the primaries (since he wouldn't have won without winning the southern states with Black support). One of Biden's first executive orders allocated federal funds to Historically Black Colleges, Native American tribes, and new programs to help close racial disparities in job and housing opportunities. Also in 2021, Biden signed legislation making Juneteenth (June 19th) a federal holiday; the day had long been celebrated by many Black Americans as the day the last slaves in the US were freed after the American Civil War. In 2022, Biden issued a blanket pardon for all people convicted of simple cannabis possession under federal law and DC statutes.

Biden then signed the Respect for Marriage Act, which repealed the Defense of Marriage Act and mandated states to respect previously conducted same-sex marriages. Unfortunately, the bill does not prevent states from banning future same-sex marriages.

Obstructionism in the Senate

Manchin and Sinema discuss how to further sabotage their own party's president, 2021.

“”They are, in effect, holding the president's priorities hostage to their personal whims. That's not a new story in politics. But their stubbornness in the face of contemporary challenges reveals the bottomless emptiness of their brand of centrist politics.

—Sarah Jones, New York Magazine, 29 September 2021.

Unfortunately, Biden's difficult task was only made more difficult by the narrow Democratic majority in the US Senate. While Democrats had successfully flipped both Georgia Senate seats, a massive achievement, that still only left them with 50 seats. Even with Vice President Harris as a tiebreaker, that left no room for defections. Defections, of course, ensued from two conservative-leaning Democrats: Joe Manchin of West Virginia and Kyrsten Sinema of Arizona.

The two sabotaged the first stages of Biden's legislative agenda with two mutually exclusive objections: Sinema wouldn't support higher taxes on the wealthy, and Manchin wouldn't support increasing the capital gains tax. The two also split from the party on social spending. Manchin was content to sit on the American Rescue Plan and allocate "zero" additional dollars to social spending, a position which infuriated Bernie Sanders and began a feud between the two. During discussions over a proposed infrastructure spending bill, Manchin demanded that the cost be reduced from $3.5 trillion to $1.5, further complicating the effort to overhaul America's crumbling transportation network.

The two also joined Republicans in voting against changing filibuster rules to allow passage of a key voting rights bill in early 2022. In May, Bernie Sanders raged at them on behalf of his onetime adversary, saying they "have sabotaged what the president has been fighting for." Sanders later doubled down on "Meet the Press", saying, "You have a better word than 'sabotage'?"

The economy (stupid)

Inflation rate in the US (blue) vs. the Eurozone (red), June 2018-June 2023.

Biden's early months in office coincided with a general recovery from the economic recession caused by COVID. Government subsidies to American families boosted consumer spending, and the GDP grew by 5.9% in 2021. A national worker shortage also drove wages up much faster than usual in 2021.

Unfortunately, the nation still felt that the economy was in the shitter in large part due to high levels of inflation that had set in after the pandemic. Biden and Trump persistently blamed the other for the inflation issue, although economists noted that the issue was a multifaceted one and that things weren't so simple as to make it one person's fault. So-called "greedflation" played a major role, as major companies, especially in the energy and commodities sectors, raised prices far beyond what should have been justified by inflation and therefore raked in record profits.

Americans also struggled against a sluggish job market, increased prices, much higher debts, and much lower savings. The Biden era also saw all-time record crises in homelessness and evictions. The administration completely abandoned renters experiencing the crushing burden of paying for a place to live. Not helping matters was Biden's dismantlement of pandemic-era welfare programs, which ended the eviction moratorium and threw millions of people (and their children) off their health insurance during 2023 and 2024. Nice one, Joe!

On the other hand, the US economy performed much better than Europe's, in large part due to Biden's decisive economic stimulus packages as well as the US being an exporter of energy rather than an importer. The Biden administration took this fact and used it in a very tone-deaf attempt to convince the American people that the economy was actually doing swell despite the aforementioned cost-of-living and housing crises. Voters weren't convinced of course, and Biden was reduced to making desperate trips to swing states like Pennsylvania rather than continue wrangling with Manchin and Sinema.

Withdrawal from Afghanistan

US Marines guard a checkpoint during the Kabul airlift.

See the main article on this topic: Afghanistan War

In February 2020, President Trump negotiated an agreement with the Taliban setting 1 May 2021 as the date whereupon US troops would exit Afghanistan. Although Trump was voted out, Biden chose to stick to the deal despite increasing signs the Taliban were intent on taking over Afghanistan once the US had left. Biden claimed that the collapse of the Afghan government "was not inevitable" and completed the troop withdrawal by the (renegotiated) date of 31 August.

Biden's eagerness to end America's longest war led to disagreements with top military brass, as the military wanted Biden to maintain 2,500 service members in Afghanistan to maintain stability. The State Department also waited too long to withdraw non-combatant personnel, not issuing the directive until 14 August, a delay which caused a mad scramble to get US citizens out. The Afghan government collapsed only a day later on 15 August, and Afghan civilians piled into Kabul Airport in the hopes the US military would be able to evacuate them. On 26 August, a suicide bombing at the airport killed 13 American servicemen and dozens of Afghans; the families of the fallen criticized Biden for never saying their names in any broadcast.

Although Biden took responsibility for the "messy" withdrawal, he also defended his decision to do so in the first place, saying "American troops cannot and should not be fighting in a war and dying in a war that Afghan forces are not willing to fight for themselves."

The Russo-Ukrainian War

Biden and Zelenskyy in Kyiv, 2023.

Throughout February 2022, Biden apparently groundlessly warned that Russia was imminently going to invade Ukraine, and he spent the time attempting to rally international leaders to deter Vladimir Putin's invasion plans. This attempt was unsuccessful in preventing the attack, which began on 24 February.

Biden immediately branded Putin a "war criminal" and authorized $800 million in security assistance as well as shipments of anti-aircraft and anti-tank weapons for Ukraine. For once, media attention was no longer on the economy or the fall of Afghanistan. Biden also enacted punishing economic sanctions on Russia, prompting many multinational companies to sever ties. Oil prices immediately skyrocketed following the war's beginning, as Russia is an OPEC member and much of the world had begun refusing imports. Biden visited Poland in March, a NATO ally Ukraine's border, to a crowd that included Ukrainian refugees on the importance of rallying Europe and other democracies against Russian aggression.

In April, Biden requested a $33 billion aid package for Ukraine, and the US House ended up increasing that number to $40 billion. Biden remained a staunch supporter of Ukraine's war effort, and he paid a visit to Kyiv in 2023.

And then the abortion ruling happened

Abortion rights protestors outside the Supreme Court, 24 June 2022.

On 24 June 2022, the US Supreme Court overturned the 1973 Roe v. Wade decision, on the basis that the prior ruling's reasoning was "exceptionally weak" and "an abuse of judicial authority." This effectively repealed the national right to an abortion American women had enjoyed for decades.

This placed Joe Biden in a strange position. He was a devout Catholic who had repeatedly said in the past that Roe "went too far", In a statement on the new Court decision, Biden admitted that he was "not big on abortion". However, Biden ended up as the country's most powerful abortion rights defender.

During his 2022 State of the Union address, Biden invited multiple women who had been impacted by the waves of state-level abortion bans in order to highlight his new agenda of enshrining to the degree possible abortion rights in the US. During the speech, Biden seemed visibly uncomfortable in his role as an abortion rights protector, notably not saying the world "abortion" even once.

Nonetheless, Biden went full steam ahead on the abortion issue. His reelection campaign churned out advertisements presenting him as the stalwart defender of abortion and blaming the repeal on Trump. By 2024, Biden had started swearing to pass a national abortion rights act should he be reelected with enough of a Congressional majority to do so.

2022 midterm elections

A relieved Joe Biden praises his party's midterm performance at a press conference.

See the main article on this topic: 2022 midterm elections

The aftershock of the abortion decision carried into the midterm elections. In the months leading to the election, the media and GOP strategists expected a "red wave" election in response to high inflation and the other challenges which had swamped Biden's presidency. When the incumbent is below 50% in approval ratings, as Biden was, the incumbent party on average loses 43 House seats. The abortion ruling dramatically changed the outcome of this election.

Democratic governor candidates won landslides in the swing states of Michigan and Pennsylvania as well as legislative majorities, election denying Republicans universally lost their elections in even remotely competitive states, and Democrats in the House came very close to keeping their majority and even almost ousted Rep. Lauren Boebert. Democrats also not only held their majority in the Senate, but actually expanded it by flipping Pennsylvania's seat.

While inflation consistently polled as the top issue for voters, but the abortion issue proved decisive for many voters. It also drove turnout among women and caused women over 65 to move significantly towards the Democrats. Democratic strategist Tom Bonier expressed his view that, "When you think of sort of just the general narrative on democracy and the sanctity of our electoral process, Democrats were talking about a lot, but it wasn't really making a dent in the numbers. And then Dobbs happens. And I think it made this argument of Republican extremism more real to voters. It connected the dots."

The classified documents investigation (and Republican tomfoolery)

Robert Hur, special counsel in the documents matter. Now best known for revealing Biden's memory problems.

In November 2022, Biden's legal team found classified documents lying around the offices of a think tank he ran, and yet more emerged in January 2023. These dated back to his time as VP, and were a major deal because federal law stipulates that people not leave classified intelligence where anyone can get to it. Biden's team handed the materials over to the National Archives, and Attorney General Merrick Garland quietly opened an investigation. This became public knowledge in 2023, when Garland appointed a special counsel to look into the matter. After searching Biden's home in Delaware, the FBI found more classified documents.

The special counsel ultimately decided that Biden had retained the documents willfully, but also decided that he couldn't prove as much in court and therefore dropped the case. Yet, in a damning comment, the special counsel also noted that Biden's defense would likely be that he was just " a sympathetic, well-meaning, elderly man with a poor memory". This was not a statement that a president already struggling with questions about his age really wanted the public to hear.

Disappointed by the end of this saga, House Republicans launched an investigation into Biden's son Hunter based on the allegations that material from a laptop he had left lying around had proved both him and the president guilty of corruption. On 12 September 2023, House Speaker Kevin McCarthy began preparing a formal impeachment inquiry even though the House investigation had not completed. This proved embarrassing for the Republicans when the House Republicans announced that they could find no evidence of Biden's wrongdoings. Further proving themselves to be a group of clowns, the House still voted 221–212 to formalize the inquiry on 13 December.

On 24 February, the House case fell apart when key witness Alexander Smirnov admitted that his statements on the Bidens' corruption were all a false story given to him by the Russian government. Looks like Putin was still crying over how his invasion of Ukraine had stalled.

(Shut the fuck up about) NATO enlargement

Biden signs America's approval of Finland and Sweden's bids to join NATO, August 2022.

Alongside a stagnating war in Ukraine, Russia took another series of diplomatic humiliations in 2024. After the Russian invasion of Ukraine, Biden vocally supported Finland and Sweden's bids to join the NATO alliance on the basis that Russia could no longer be trusted to leave its neighbors the fuck alone. The countries submitted their membership applications in May 2022, and Biden met the Finnish President Sauli Niinistö and Swedish Prime Minister Magdalena Andersson at the White House a day later. Typical threats and crying from Moscow ensued. Maybe if Russia was a better country and a better neighbor, it wouldn't have to worry about countries on its border joining NATO.

In order to join NATO, every member of the alliance must approve the application. Biden signed off on both applications, with the Senate having approved as well with a 95-1 vote. Finland became an official member in April 2023, but Sweden's application faltered due to objections from Turkey (because something something Kurdish terrorists) and Hungary (because Viktor Orbán is Putin's butt boy). Biden focused on making diplomatic overtures to Turkey, eventually helping convince them to drop the veto in January 2024. This left Hungary holding the bag as the sole target of wrath from its fellow EU and NATO members, and Orbán finally caved in late February, albeit not without much bitching and moaning.

Support for Israeli atrocities in Gaza ("Genocide Joe")

Biden greets Netanyahu and Israeli President Isaac Herzog in Tel Aviv, October 2023.

On 7 October 2023, the terrorist group Hamas attacked Israel from its bases in the Gaza Strip, an event which somehow took the Israeli Defense Forces by surprise despite numerous warning signs over the preceding months. The attack resulted in the deaths of 695 Israeli civilians, including 36 children, as well as 373 security forces and 71 foreigners, giving a total of 1,139. A huge number, but one which was to be dwarfed by future events.

Israel declared war on Hamas in response to the attack, and on 9 October it implemented a "siege" of the Gaza Strip by halting shipments of food, water, and fuel. Gaza, an arid region with few sources of water, was quickly plunged into a humanitarian crisis. In addition, Israel began an indiscriminate bombing campaign that leveled entire portions of Gaza and wiped out numerous civilian families. By December, the United Nations said that 70% of school buildings in Gaza had been attacked despite schools being used to shelter civilians.

Damage in Gaza City, October 2023.

As these clearly evident war crimes went on, Joe Biden remained a steadfast supporter of Israel. He immediately responded to Hamas' attack with a furious national address, calling the events "pure, unadulterated evil", "sickening", "abhorrent", and "a violation of every code of human morality." Between the beginning of hostilities and May 2024, Biden signed off on $12.5 billion in aid to Israel, and Biden placed no restrictions on how Israel would use the weapons it received from the US. Materiel support included tank and artillery ammunition, bombs, rockets, and small arms. These are weapons Israel immediately turned around and used on Gazan civilians.

Pro-ceasefire protestors in Washington DC, November 2023.

In private, Biden repeatedly expressed his frustration at the intransigence of Israeli PM Benjamin Netanyahu, as Biden had tried and failed to convince the former to take measures to reduce civilian casualties and open negotiations with Hamas. In public, Biden did nothing to change US policy and bluntly rejected the idea of a ceasefire.

Polls showed that voter approval of Biden's actions in regards to the Israel-Gaza conflict collapsed between December 2023 and March 2024 as more evidence and more instances of Israeli war crimes emerged. Protestors stuck him with the nickname "Genocide Joe," especially after the International Court of Justice held on 26 January that it was "plausible" that Israel was committing acts that violate the Genocide Convention. Biden later made things worse for himself by denouncing the International Criminal Court for seeking warrants against Israeli leaders.

2024 reelection campaign

Biden and his 81st birthday cake.

See the main article on this topic: 2024 U.S. presidential election

On 25 April 2023, Biden announced that he would seek reelection, much to the chagrin of people who'd thought that he would only serve one term. Biden had stated during his 2020 campaign that he saw himself as "a bridge, not as anything else." Meanwhile, people pointed out that Biden would be 86 at the end of a potential second term, and his approval rating at the point of this announcement had slipped to its lowest point ever at 37%. This was not an auspicious way to begin his campaign. His rallying cry, "lets finish this job," fell flat with the many, many Americans who didn't want him to do that.

Protest votes in the primaries

Biden faced little formal opposition in the 2024 primary elections, likely due to lingering trauma in the party over the 1980 Democratic primaries when Ted Kennedy massively weakened incumbent Jimmy Carter with a hard-fought primary bid. This contributed to Carter's defeat and the rise of Ronald Reagan. This didn't mean Biden was in the clear. Former 2020 rival Marianne Williamson and liquor magnate Rep. Dean Phillips of Minnesota both announced their intent to challenge Biden for the Democratic nomination, the latter receiving the support of prominent Never Trump GOP strategist Steve Schmidt and anti-affirmative action billionaire Bill Ackman. Neither candidate found much traction; Williamson didn't win a single delegate and Phillips' best finish was 19.7% of the vote in New Hampshire, which sounds good on its face for a challenger to an incumbent until you factor in that Joe Biden wasn't on the ballot, didn't campaign in New Hampshire due to party rules, and won 63.8% of the vote as a write-in candidate.

He did have to deal with a protest campaign encouraging primary voters to cast "uncommitted" ballots to signal that Biden had lost their support over his enabling of Israel's war crimes in Gaza. Although the movement was no threat to his nomination, it garnered headlines when over 100,000 voters in Michigan handed in "uncommitted" ballots, allowing "uncommitted" to receive actual delegates. And although fewer votes were registered, "uncommitted" received 12.7% in North Carolina, 19% in Minnesota and 29% (!) in Hawaii. In New York, which does not have an "uncommitted" option, 11.5% of voters returned blank ballots.

So on the one hand, nobody (significant) tried to primary the sitting president, which was a good sign for him. On the other hand, "nobody" actually managed to win delegates, which was a very bad one. Curiously enough, Joe Biden became the first incumbent president to lose a presidential primary since Jimmy Carter, when he lost the American Samoa caucuses to venture capitalist Jason Palmer, someone most national media didn't know was running. We all remember what happened to Carter, right?

Don't you think he looks tired?

Biden explains his historic decision to end his reelection campaign, 24 July 2024.

“”We finally beat Medicare.

—One of the numerous gaffes from his disastrous debate performance.

On 27 June, Joe Biden met Donald Trump, the presumptive Republican nominee, on the debate stage. Much was riding on Biden's performance, as he needed to assuage concerns about his age and put on a good enough performance to at least somewhat recover his poll numbers. This did not happen. In what would become perhaps the most consequential debate fuckup in modern history (up there with Nixon in 1960), Biden immediately appeared raspy, mumbling, and forgetful, and at times, barely coherent. The fears about his age and his ability to defeat Trump were vindicated. Democratic strategists went into panic mode before the debate had even finished. His poll numbers against Trump, which were already bad before, fell even further, to the point where Democratic leaders, donors, voters, and strategists feared Biden would damage down-ballot races. Biden later admitted that he had "screwed up" during the debate.

It ain't Joever 'til it's Joever

"Screwed up" was putting it mildly. The next 25 days saw Biden's reelection bid implode. On 2 July, Rep. Lloyd Doggett from Texas became the first national-level Democrat to call for Biden to drop out; four additional congressmen followed suit on the 7th. Biden stayed defiant, repeatedly stating that he would stay in the race. But he didn't help matters for himself when he referred to Trump as his Vice President on 11 July. On the 17th, high-profile Rep. Adam Schiff called on him to "pass the torch" amid Biden's third COVID diagnosis and rising enthusiasm for Trump after the latter survived an assassination attempt. What quite possibly sealed the deal was the private urging from both Nancy Pelosi and Barack Obama.

On 21 July, he finally announced that he was dropping out of the race and endorsing his VP, Kamala Harris, as his successor. Within two days, Kamala Harris and her team had effectively ensured her nomination by making a marathon of phone calls to delegates, high-profile party members, and anyone who could have posed a threat at the convention. On 25 July, Biden gave a televised address explaining that he had been convinced that he wasn't the best person to take on Donald Trump and rescue American democracy from a potential second Trump administration and that he would now focus entirely on the presidency for his remaining time in office. Biden was the first president to end an ongoing reelection bid since Lyndon Johnson in 1968, and he was the first president ever to do so after already having won his party's primaries.

Trump, meanwhile, had been genuinely surprised and dismayed by something he had always maintained he wanted, especially after the GOP had spent most of its time at the Republican National Convention attacking Biden rather than Harris. Trump later whined on Truth Social that his campaign should be "reimbursed" for having spent so much money going after Biden, only for him to drop out.

Allegations of inappropriate physical contact and sexual assault

“”I'm a tactile politician.

—Joe Biden, March 2019

“”Not once — never — did I believe I acted inappropriately.

—Joe Biden, March 2019

There are several videos and pictures of Biden engaging in what commentators consider to be inappropriate proximity to women and children, including kissing and or touching. Biden described himself as a "tactile politician", admitting this behavior caused trouble in the past.

In March 2019, Lucy Flores, former Nevada assemblywoman, accused Biden of having kissed her without her consent at a 2014 campaign rally in Las Vegas. Flores wrote that Biden walked up behind her, put his hands on her shoulders, smelled her hair, and kissed the back of her head, in "an intimate way reserved for close friends, family, or romantic partners – and I felt powerless to do anything about it." Few days later, three additional women came forward with allegations of inappropriate conduct. Amy Lappos, a former congressional aide, accused Biden of having crossed a decency line when he touched her in a non-sexual but inappropriate way by holding her head to rub noses with her at a political fundraiser in Greenwich in 2009. Another woman said that Biden ran his hand from her shoulder down her back, and the other said that he placed his hand on her thigh. By April 2019, a total of seven women accused Biden of inappropriately touching them.

Tara Reade

Tara Reade had accused Biden of making inappropriate physical contact with her in 1993 when she worked in the then-senator's office from December 1992 to August 1993. Reade has given many interviews about this incident, including multiple interviews with The Washington Post. Lucy Flores' story of Biden's inappropriate touching inspired Reade to initially allege that Biden had inappropriately touched her, which was published in her hometown newspaper, The Union, on April 3, 2019. In that article, Reade's accusation at that time was:

“”He used to put his hand on my shoulder and run his finger up my neck,” Reade said. “I would just kind of freeze and wait for him to stop doing that.

This was similar to what other women have accused Biden of doing, and it was reported that Reade did not consider that behavior sexualization.

Reade told The Union that she left her job with the Senator because she refused to serve drinks at a fundraiser and because she felt sidelined because of that. In a 2019 interview with The Washington Post, Reade laid blame for her leaving Senator's office for "bullying" by the Senator's staff rather than by Biden himself:

“”This is what I want to emphasize: It’s not him. It’s the people around him who keep covering for him… For instance, he should have known what was happening to me… Looking back now, that’s my criticism. Maybe he could have been a little more in touch with his own staff.

By her differing accounts, Reade either left voluntarily because she felt sidelined, or she was forced out by Ted Kaufman, Biden's chief of staff.

As recently as 2017, Reade tweeted positively about Biden. But starting in January 2020, Reade began publicly supporting Bernie Sanders' presidential campaign, and called Biden "a misogynist pred". In March 2020, Reade gave an interview with Katie Halper, a Bernie supporter, in which she changed her story that Biden had sexually assaulted her in the Senate. In a subsequent interview with The Washington Post, Reade could not remember where in the Capitol she was allegedly sexually assaulted by Biden. Reade’s younger brother, Collin Moulton, confirmed Reade's initial story of inappropriate touching but then revised his story to conform to Reade's revised story.

Biden's presidential campaign has called this sexual assault allegation false:

“”He firmly believes that women have a right to be heard — and heard respectfully. Such claims should also be diligently reviewed by an independent press. What is clear about this claim: It is untrue. This absolutely did not happen.

Marianne Baker, who was one of Reade's supervisors, also denied Reade's claim of having made a formal complaint of the assault:

“”In all my years working for Sen. Biden, I never once witnessed, or heard of, or received, any reports of inappropriate conduct, period — not from Ms. Reade, not from anyone. I have absolutely no knowledge or memory of Ms. Reade’s accounting of events, which would have left a searing impression on me as a woman professional, and as a manager. These clearly false allegations are in complete contradiction to both the inner workings of our Senate office and to the man I know and worked so closely with for almost two decades.

Two of Reade's other supervisors, Dennis Toner and Ted Kaufman, also flatly denied that the complaint was made, and both stated that they would have remembered it if such a complaint had been made.

Reade had told The Washington Post that she had confided in her mother, who died in 1993, regarding the allegations. Subsequently, Reade told The Intercept that her mother had made a phone call to Larry King Live some time in 1993 which referenced her daughter's experience at The Capitol. The Intercept was able to find a recording of the radio conversation, the complete transcript of which is:

King: San Luis Obispo, California, hello.
Caller: Yes, hello. I’m wondering what a staffer would do besides go to the press in Washington? My daughter has just left there, after working for a prominent senator, and could not get through with her problems at all, and the only thing she could have done was go to the press, and she chose not to do it out of respect for him.
King: In other words, she had a story to tell but, out of respect for the person she worked for, she didn’t tell it?
Caller: That’s true.

Assuming that the anonymous caller was Reade's mother, one does not know what exactly the issue was that her mother was referring to. Was it the inappropriate touching that Reade had initially alleged, was it her difficulties with the Senator's office staff, or was it the sexual assault that she is currently alleging? Ms. Reade has taken up residence in Russia as of late May 2023. She has claimed her move was motivated by her desire to avoid imprisonment and being murdered. The story in the Russian propaganda mill, Sputnik International begins with the headline: "Biden Accuser Tara Reade: My Two Choices in US Were to Walk Into Cage or be Killed." Believe what you will.

"Believe all women"

“”"What we are witnessing is another instance of the right decrying what it imagines the American women’s movement to be."

—Susan Faludi

Concomitant with Reade's 2020 accusation against Biden, the phrase "Believe all women" began cropping up. It is noteworthy because the phrase "Believe women" (without the 'all') began in 2016 with Harvey Weinstein's downfall and rose to prominence with the #MeToo hashtag that began in 2017.

“”"Believe women" was a reminder, not an absolute rule; the beginning of a process, not an end. It was flexible enough to apply to various contexts: Believe women … enough to seriously investigate their claims. Believe women … when they tell you about pervasive indignities — catcalling, leering — that happen to them and their friends when you’re not around.

—Monica Hesse (ellipses hers)

"Believe all women" is a phrase that is generally used to taunt Democrats by the right-wing, who seek to make a straw man argument against concerns over sexual abuse and sexual harassment of women, using the original "Believe women" slogan that originated with the #MeToo movement. In this specific case (utilized by the usual right-wing suspects such as Glenn Beck, Megyn Kelly, and Fox news anchor Martha MacCallum) the flawed argument concerns the assertion that they're not going to believe this woman, Tara Reade, so Democrats are hypocrites. The problem with the phrase "Believe all women" is that it is inherently contradictory (or paradoxical): it's not unrealistic that two women could have contradictory opinions about something, and so it would be irrational to believe both of them. The phrase "Believe all women" is, in fact, used as a straw man and a gaslighting technique — an intentional misrepresentation of "Believe women" to try to trip up people who might want to give Biden the benefit of the doubt. It is used just like "All Lives Matter." was used to misrepresent "Black Lives Matter."

See also

For those of you in the mood, RationalWiki has a fun article about Joe Biden.

• Lyndon Baines Johnson: Biden is in many ways the spiritual successor of LBJ, as their careers mirror greatly.
• Barack Obama: The man who chose him to be Vice President.
• Donald Trump: His 2016 predecessor, 2020 opponent and 2024 successor.
• Dick Cheney: Joe Biden's predecessor as VP.
• Al Gore: Cheney's predecessor and the other most recent Vice President to win the popular vote as a presidential candidate.
• Mike Pence: Biden's successor as VP.
• Kamala Harris: Biden's running mate in 2020 and Pence's successor.
• Robert Hunter Biden: His son, and the subject of numerous conspiracy theories involving Biden.
• Fun:List of Joe Biden gaffes
• Fun:Socialism with Biden characteristics

External links

• The Onion's coverage of Joe. (Of course he responded back.)
• Exploring the Origins of the Legend of Joe Biden, TPM
• Joe Biden on Twitter
• Joe Biden on Facebook
• Joe Biden's 2020 campaign website

References

2008 United States presidential election articles on RationalWiki

Topics: Debate:Religious beliefs and public office - Mission accomplished - Same-sex marriage - United States Electoral College - Values Voter Debate 2007

Parties: Constitution Party - Democratic Party - Green Party of the United States - Libertarian Party - Republican Party
Candidates: Baldwin (Con) - Barr (Lib) - Brownback (R) - Clinton (D) - Giuliani (R) - Gravel (D) - Huckabee (R) - Keyes (R) - McCain (R) - McKinney (Green) - Obama (D) - Paul (R) - Romney (R) • Running mates: Biden (D) - Palin (R)

Winner: Barack Obama

2012 United States presidential election articles on RationalWiki

Topics: Affordable Care Act - Benghazi attack - Debate:Religious beliefs and public office - Same-sex marriage - United States Electoral College
Parties: Americans Elect - Constitution Party - Democratic Party - Green Party of the United States - Libertarian Party - Prohibition Party - Republican Party (primaries • Tea Party)
Candidates: Bachmann (R) - Cain (R) - Gingrich (R) - Johnson (Lib) - Obama (D) - Perry (R) - Paul (R) - Romney (R) - Santorum (R) - Stein (Green) • Running mates: Biden (D) - Ryan (R)
Winner: Barack Obama (incumbent)

2020 United States presidential election articles on RationalWiki

Topics: Abortion - Climate change - Coronavirus - Education - Illegal immigration - Gun control - LGBT rights - Marijuana - Supreme Court - Taxes - United States Electoral College - Universal healthcare
Parties: Democratic Party (primaries) - Green Party of the United States - Libertarian Party - Republican Party
Candidates: Biden (D) - Bloomberg (D) - Buttigieg (D) - Gabbard (D) - Gravel (D) - Harris (D) - O'Rourke (D) - Sanders (D) - Sanford (R) - Trump (R) - Walsh (R) - Warren (D) - West (Independent) - Williamson (D) - Yang (D) • Running mates: Harris (D) - Pence (R)
Winner: Joe Biden
Fallout from sore losers: 2021 U.S. Capitol riot

2024 United States presidential election articles on RationalWiki

Topics: Abortion - Inflation - Israel/Palestine - Project 2025 - Supreme Court - Ukraine - Undocumented immigration
Parties: Democratic Party - Green Party of the United States - Libertarian Party - Republican Party
Candidates: Biden (D) - Burgum (R) - Christie (R) - DeSantis (R) - Elder (R) - Haley (R) - Harris (D) - Kennedy Jr. (Independent) - Pence (R) - Ramaswamy (R) - Stein (Green) - Trump (R) - West (Independent) - Williamson (D) • Running mates: Walz (D) - Vance (R)
Winner: Donald Trump

Presidents of the United States

v - t - e

Washington (I) - J. Adams (Fed.) - Jefferson (Dem-Rep) - Madison (Dem-Rep) - Monroe (Dem-Rep) - J.Q. Adams (Dem-Rep) - Jackson (D) - Van Buren (D) - W.H. Harrison (Whig) - Tyler (Whig) - Polk (D) - Taylor (Whig) - Fillmore (Whig) - Pierce (D) - Buchanan (D) - Lincoln (R) - A. Johnson (D*) - Grant (R) - Hayes (R) - Garfield (R) - Arthur (R) - Cleveland (D) - B. Harrison (R) - Cleveland (D) again - McKinley (R) - T. Roosevelt (R) - Taft (R) - Wilson (D) - Harding (R) - Coolidge (R) - Hoover (R) - F.D. Roosevelt (D) - Truman (D) - Eisenhower (R) - Kennedy (D) - L.B. Johnson (D) - Nixon (R) - Ford (R) - Carter (D) - Reagan (R) - G.H.W. Bush (R) - Clinton (D) - G.W. Bush (R) - Obama (D) - Trump (R) - Biden (D) (incumbent)
*Ran for VP on the "National Union" ticket together with Lincoln but was otherwise a lifelong Democrat