It was brought up again in 2001 with a president ready to sign it, and versions passed both the Senate and the House. He opposed the nominations of Chief Justice John Roberts and Justice Samuel Alito, and after the hearings on their nominations said, “I have reached a conclusion that we should not even have these hearings, that we should just go right to the floor like they used to do in the old days.”īiden has been the sponsor in Judiciary of the bankruptcy bill, backed strongly by Delaware’s MBNA and other credit card issuers, which was vetoed by Bill Clinton in 2000. He sought out women to serve on Judiciary and worked hard on the 1994 Violence Against Women Act he helped renew it in 2000, although the Supreme Court declared part of it unconstitutional, and again in 2005. In 1988, Biden was stricken by an aneurysm on the night of the New Hampshire primary he was rushed to the hospital and nearly died, but recovered fully.Īfter the Thomas hearings, Biden seemed defensive about attacks from the feminist left, then the greatest source of activism in the Democratic Party. Paraphrasing someone else’s words is not a political crime-most political discourse is conducted in familiar shorthand terms-but Biden in dramatizing his background actually distorted it, for unlike Kinnock he did not rise from working class roots, and unlike in Britain, upward social mobility is a common experience in the United States. But Biden decided to leave the race when a Michael Dukakis staffer leaked an “attack video” showing similarities between Biden’s stump speech about his background and a speech by British Labour Party leader Neil Kinnock. He hoped to inspire a new generation as John Kennedy had inspired his. In the middle of the Bork hearings came a climactic moment for Biden, who in 1987 started running for president. Once the story was out though, Hill and then Thomas testified to fascinated television audiences Thomas was confirmed, over Biden’s opposition. Biden was bitterly criticized for covering up this information, but he had shared it with committee members, who agreed that Hill’s initial unwillingness to testify publicly meant that any reference to it would be unfair to Thomas. The 1991 hearings on Clarence Thomas exploded when someone leaked charges of sexual harassment by Anita Hill against the nominee. In his 1987 hearings, nominee Robert Bork set a high standard for intellectual seriousness, but some of his opponents used his candor to vote against him, from which Biden’s attempts to construct an honestly based, anti-Bork rationale proved politically indistinguishable no other nominee since has testified so candidly. As chairman, Biden presided over the most contentious Supreme Court confirmation hearings in history. The issues that arise here-abortion, flagburning, capital punishment, crime control-cut deeply, and for years the cultural liberals in the Democratic Party differed sharply on most of them from the constituents Biden saw in Delaware every day. For many years he did much of his most visible work on the Judiciary Committee, which he chaired from 1987-95 and served as ranking Democrat on from 1981-97. In the Senate, Biden has a moderate-to-liberal voting record. He remains a familiar figure in, and one familiar with, his constituency (and to Amtrak employees).
He thought about resigning, but was persuaded to serve, and began his practice, kept to this day, of commuting from his home near Wilmington on Amtrak, 80 minutes to and from Washington every day. A month later his wife and daughter were killed in an auto accident his two young sons were injured. In 1972 he ran for the Senate against a popular incumbent who seemed ready to retire, while this young challenger had energy, an attractive extended family and an ability to connect with voters’ emotions. After school he moved back to the Wilmington suburbs, practiced law, and in 1970, at 27, was elected to the New Castle County Council. He graduated from the University of Delaware and Syracuse Law School he married and started a family while still in law school. As a teenager he had a stutter, but taught himself to deliver a speech to his whole school. Joseph Biden, Delaware’s longest-serving senator, was first elected in 1972, at age 29 (he reached the constitutional age of 30 by the time he took office) he has spent most of his life as a senator.īiden grew up in the suburbs of Wilmington in a middle-class home his father was a car salesman and one grandfather was a state senator in Pennsylvania.
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