Democrat Joseph Robinette Biden Jr. has been elected the 46th president of the United States following the US elections on November 3, 2020.
He won Pennsylvania on Saturday to exceed the 270 electoral votes needed to win the White House.
Biden also carried Nevada, Arizona, Wisconsin and Michigan on his path to making Trump the first incumbent since George H.W. Bush to lose his bid for a second term.
The veteran Democratic politician, who will take office in January 2021, has promised to be a safe pair of hands for the world. He vows to be friendlier to America’s allies than Trump, tougher on autocrats, and better for the planet.
For more than 35 years, President-elect Joe Biden represented Delaware in the US Senate. He resigned in 2009 to become vice president under Barack Obama. He ran for president in 1988 and 2008 before breaking through in 2020.
President-elect Biden Jr. has ran a very successful campaign having won the Democratic Party nomination in June 2020 against stalwart Vermont Sen.
Bernie Sanders, Amy Klobuchar of Minnesota, Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts, Pete Buttigieg, two times former Mayor of South Bend l, Indiana State and his Vice President-elect Kamala Harris of California.
Joe Biden briefly worked as an attorney before turning to politics. He became the fifth-youngest U.S. senator in history as well as Delaware’s longest-serving senator. His 2008 presidential campaign never gained momentum, but Democratic nominee Barack Obama selected him as his running mate, and Biden went on to serve two terms as the 47th vice president of the United States. In 2017, at the close of his administration, Obama presented Biden with the Presidential Medal of Freedom.
Two years later Biden launched his campaign for U.S. president and was elected as the 46th president of the United States.
From 1973 to 2009, Biden served a distinguished Senate career. During his time in the Senate, Biden won respect as one of the body’s leading foreign policy experts, serving as chairman of the Committee on Foreign Relations for several years.
His many foreign policy positions included advocating for strategic arms limitation with the Soviet Union, promoting peace and stability in the Balkans, expanding NATO to include former Soviet-bloc nations and opposing the First Gulf War. In later years, he called for American action to end the genocide in Darfur and spoke out against President George W. Bush’s handling of the Iraq War, particularly opposing the troop surge of 2007.
In 1987, having established himself as one of Washington’s most prominent Democratic lawmakers, Biden decided to run for the U.S. presidency. He dropped out of the Democratic primary, however, after reports surfaced that he had plagiarised part of a speech.
In 2007, 20 years after his first unsuccessful presidential bid, Biden once again decided to run for the U.S. presidency. Despite his years of experience in the Senate, however, Biden’s campaign failed to generate much momentum in a field dominated by Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama. Biden dropped out after receiving less than one percent of the vote in the crucial Iowa caucuses.
On November 2, 2008, Barack Obama and Joe Biden convincingly defeated the Republican ticket of Arizona Senator John McCain and Alaska Governor Sarah Palin. On January 20, 2009, Obama was sworn in as the 44th U.S. president and Biden became the 47th vice president.
BY MALIK SULLEMANA
