The delegates to the Democratic National Convention in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, have officially nominated former Vice President Joe Biden (D) as the Democratic Party candidate for President of the United States. Votes were cast remotely due to the COVID-19 epidemic. Biden will stand in the November general election against the presumptive Republican nominee, President Donald Trump (R).
Biden has been the presumptive Democratic nominee since securing a majority of pledged party convention delegates in June, following a complex primary against twenty-eight other candidates. Today’s convention vote makes Biden’s win official. He is joined on the Democratic ticket by his vice presidential running mate, Senator Kamala Harris (D-CA).
Biden began his career as a law clerk before becoming a public defender and then an attorney in private practice at a firm in Delaware. While practicing law, he also served as a member of the county council of New Castle County, Delaware.
In 1972, Biden was elected to the United States Senate representing the state of Delaware. He was reelected six more times and served in that body until his resignation in 2009. As of this writing, he was the longest-serving senator from Delaware, the eighteenth longest-serving U.S. senator, and the youngest senator to cast over ten thousand votes. Biden unsuccessfully sought the Democratic presidential nomination in 1988 and 2008. From 2009 to 2017, Biden served as Vice President of the United States under President Barack Obama (D).
Biden has a reputation as a down-to-earth politician with middle-class and blue-collar appeal. During his senate career he famously traveled between Delaware and Washington, DC, on Amtrak trains, and his political style harked back to the days when politicians across party aisles had good personal relationships and were willing to seek compromise. He was generally regarded as a moderate, but has shifted significantly to the left along with much of his party in recent years. Even so, many in the party’s socialist wing consider him too centrist.
The Democratic Party is the second of the three ‘fifty-state’ parties to officially select its presidential and vice presidential nominees. The Libertarian Party selected its nominees at the Libertarian Nominating Convention held online in May. The Republican Party is expected to select its nominees at the Republican National Convention in Charlotte, North Carolina, next week.