Joe Biden

Also known for the Senate’s best comb-over, Joseph Biden was elected to represent Delaware in the United States Senate in 1972. You might be surprised that the second post on No Votes for Granted is Joe Biden—we are too—but we at No Votes chose to write about him because we sorta like him.

Compared to McCain, he has nowhere near the name recognition—despite being behind some of the major legislation to come out of the Senate in the last 20 or so years.

Our patented Quickie Biographie: Biden attended University of Delaware, graduating in 1965. Then he went to Syracuse University College of Law, graduating in 1968. In law school, he married his first wife, Neilia. They had three children together. His first wife and youngest child were killed in a car accident in 1972, just after he was first elected to the Senate. He later married Jill Tracy Jacobs, to whom he is still married. His son, Joseph R. Biden III, is currently running for attorney general of Delaware.

Biden, a 30-year old Democrat, surprised Delaware in 1972, becoming the fifth-youngest Senator in United States history. Since then, Biden has become an influential member of the US Senate. Indeed, he is a member of one of the most important committees in the Senate: the Judiciary Committee. For better or for worse, depending on who you ask, as Chairman of the Judiciary Committee, he presided over the infamous Supreme Court confirmation hearings of Robert Bork and Clarence Thomas. (No Votes would like to take a stand here, and say no matter what party you support, this type of puffery is good old fashioned American bull-crap)

Based on his work in the Senate, Biden is considered an expert on drug policy, crime prevention, and national security. He has earned a reputation for crafting significant federal legislation. Arguably, his biggest accomplishment came through writing the Violence Against Women Act (VAWA). Passed in 2000, VAWA was a groundbreaking measure designed to combat domestic violence and help end gender-related crimes. If you don't know anything about VAWA, we recommend you look into it.

Biden ran for the Democratic nomination in 1988, but after a plagiarism scandal rocked his campaign, he bowed out. He was found to have plagiarized a speech from British Labour Party lead Neil Kinnock. The speech included adaptation of some details of Kinnock's life, which were not actually true of Biden's life. There were also some overly-picky rumors about his having mis-cited a paper in law school.

In December 2004, he said he would pursue the possibility of running for President in 2008, admitting, “I’m going to proceed as if I’m going to run.” He tempered that comment in June 2005, announcing that he would seek the Democratic Presidential nomination in 2008 only if he believed his message and vision for the country was resonating with Americans.

To us, Biden seems like a strong candidate. A longtime Senator, he has the diverse and multi-faceted experience that the United States will need in a leader. He is strong enough on typically Republican issues like national defense and crime prevention, while still being able to appeal to his Democratic base in Delaware. Like John Kerry before him, we think the only thing standing in his way is himself. Kerry hid from his true message and tried to play himself as another Dubya-style Everyman, appealing to the gun-toting, NASCAR®-loving, church-going middle America. This was clearly a mistake: had Kerry came out and said, “I was born to run this country, I have the knowledge, expertise, and desire to lead us where we need to go,” he might have actually won in 2004. Biden’s challenge seems similar. Can he convey to the voters that he is the man we need as President without coming off as too arrogant to be elected? In short, will he and should he appeal to middle-America?

No Votes looks forward to learning more about Biden. Our feelings certainly haven’t been set in stone and hopefully your's aren't either. Let the debate on him begin.