Veeps: Joe Biden
Today in our series on Veeps, we profile the incumbent Vice President of the United States, one Joseph Robinette Biden Jr., and yes, this is a big (expletive deleted) deal, so since it's going to be longer than usual, I'd better put it behind a cut.
Joe Biden was born on November 20, 1942, at St. Mary's Hospital in Scranton, Pennsylvania. His parents were Joseph Robinette Biden, Sr. (who passed away in 2002 at the age of 87) and Catherine Eugenia "Jean" Biden (née Finnegan, who died in 2010 at the age of 93). He was the first of four siblings in a strong Catholic family. His siblings, in order of their birth, are his sister Valerie and his two brothers James and Frank. Robinette is the family name of his paternal grandmother. Biden's father had suffered several business problems by the time Biden was born, and when the Scranton economy went in the dumps during the 1950s, Biden's father could not find enough work. In 1953, the Biden family moved to Claymont, Delaware, and later to Wilmington, Delaware. Joe Biden Sr. became a used car salesman, and the family's circumstances improved.
Biden attended the University of Delaware in Newark, where he played halfback with the Blue Hens freshman football team. In 1964, while on spring break in the Bahamas, he met Neilia Hunter, who came from an affluent background in Skaneateles, New York. He double majored in history and political science and graduated with a Bachelor of Arts in 1965, ranking 506th of 688 in his class. He then entered Syracuse University College of Law so he could be closer to Neilia. During his first year, he was accused of having plagiarized 5 of 15 pages of a law review article. Biden was permitted to retake the course after receiving an 'F' grade. He graduated in 1968, ranking 76th of 85 in his class and was admitted to the Delaware Bar in 1969.
Biden received five student draft deferments, with the first coming in late 1963 and the last in early 1968, during the Vietnam War. In April 1968, he was reclassified by the Selective Service System as not available for service due to having had asthma as a teenager. He chose not to drink alcohol, having observed problems in his own family by others. Biden suffered from stuttering from childhood and into his twenties and he overcame it by reciting poetry in front of a mirror.
On August 27, 1966, Biden married Neilia Hunter in a Roman Catholic ceremony despite her parents' objection. The couple had three children, Joseph R. "Beau" Biden III (born 1969), Robert Hunter (born 1970), and Naomi Christina (born 1971).
During 1968, Biden clerked for six months at a Wilmington law firm headed by prominent local Republican William Prickett and considered himself to be a Republican".Local Republicans tried to recruit Biden as a candidate, but he resisted due to his dislike Richard Nixon. He registered as an Independent instead.
In 1969, Biden resumed practicing law in Wilmington, first as a public defender and then at a Democratic firm. Biden switched his registration to Democratic. Biden also started his own firm, Biden and Walsh and he supplemented his income by managing properties. Later that year, he ran as a Democrat for the New Castle County Council and won. Biden served on the County Council from 1970 to 1972 while continuing his private law practice.
Biden ran in the 1972 U.S. Senate election in Delaware in a campaign that had little money and was given no chance of winning. His campaign was managed by his sister Valerie Biden Owens (who would go on to manage his future campaigns). He received some assistance from the AFL-CIO. Initially he trailed in the polls by almost 30 percentage points, but his energy level and his ability to connect with voters' emotions gave him an advantage over the ready-to-retire incumbent opponent. Biden won the November 7, 1972, election in an upset by a margin of 3,162 votes.
On December 18, 1972, a few weeks after the election, Biden's wife and one-year-old daughter were killed in an automobile accident while Christmas shopping in Hockessin, Delaware. Neilia Biden's station wagon was hit by a tractor-trailer as she pulled out from an intersection; the truck driver was cleared of any wrongdoing. Biden's sons Beau and Hunter survived the accident and were taken to the hospital in fair condition. Beau suffered a broken leg and Hunter had a minor skull fracture and other head injuries. Biden considered resigning to care for his family, but was persuaded not to by Senate Majority Leader Mike Mansfield. Biden was sworn in the following month at age 30 (the minimum age required to hold the office), making him the sixth-youngest senator in U.S. history.
To be at home every day for his young sons, Biden began the practice of commuting every day by Amtrak train for 1½ hours each way from his home in the Wilmington suburbs to Washington, D.C., which he continued to do throughout his Senate career. In remembrance of his wife and daughter, Biden does not work on December 18, the anniversary of the accident. Biden's son, Beau, became Delaware Attorney General and an Army Judge Advocate serving in Iraq and his younger son, Hunter, became a Washington attorney and lobbyist.
In 1975, Biden met Jill Tracy Jacobs, who grew up in Willow Grove, Pennsylvania, and would become a teacher in Delaware. They had met on a blind date arranged by Biden's brother. On June 17, 1977, Biden and Jacobs married at the Chapel at the United Nations in New York.[18] They have one daughter, Ashley Blazer (born 1981), who became a social worker.
Biden became ranking minority member of the U.S. Senate Committee on the Judiciary in 1981. Seven years later he ran for the 1988 Democratic presidential nomination, declaring his candidacy at the Wilmington train station on June 9, 1987. At first his campaign showed some promise, but by August 1987, the campaign was trailing those of Michael Dukakis and Dick Gephardt. In September 1987, the campaign ran into trouble when he was accused of plagiarizing a speech that had been made earlier that year by Neil Kinnock, leader of the British Labour Party.Biden was soon found to also copied passages from a 1967 speech by Robert F. Kennedy (for which Biden aides took the blame) and a short phrase from the 1961 inaugural address of John F. Kennedy, as well as a 1976 passage from Hubert H. Humphrey. A few days later, Biden's plagiarism incident in law school came to public light. Video was also released showing that when earlier questioned by a New Hampshire resident about his grades in law school, Biden had stated that he had graduated in the "top half" of his class, that he had attended law school on a full scholarship, and that he had received three degrees in college, each of which was false. He withdrew from the nomination race on September 23, 1987.
In February 1988, after suffering from several episodes of severe neck pain, Biden was given lifesaving surgery to correct an intracranial berry aneurysm. While recuperating, he suffered a pulmonary embolism. Another operation to repair a second aneurysm, which had caused no symptoms but was also at risk from bursting, was performed in May 1988. Biden has had no recurrences or effects from the aneurysms since then.
Biden was a long-time member of the U.S. Senate Committee on the Judiciary, which he chaired from 1987 until 1995. As chairman, Biden presided over the two most contentious U.S. Supreme Court confirmation hearings in history, those for Robert Bork in 1987 and Clarence Thomas in 1991. Biden was critical of the actions of Independent Counsel Kenneth Starr during the 1990s Whitewater controversy and Lewinsky scandal investigations. He voted to acquit during the impeachment of President Bill Clinton.
Biden was also a long-time member of the U.S. Senate Committee on Foreign Relations. In 1997, he became the ranking minority member and chaired the committee in January 2001 and from June 2001 through 2003. When Democrats re-took control of the Senate following the 2006 elections, Biden again assumed the top spot on the committee in 2007. Biden voted against authorization for the Gulf War in 1991, but he was a strong supporter of the 2001 war in Afghanistan, saying "Whatever it takes, we should do it." On the question of Iraq, Biden stated in 2002 that Saddam Hussein was a threat to national security, and that there was no option but to eliminate that threat. In October 2002, Biden voted in favor of the Authorization for Use of Military Force Against Iraq, justifying the Iraq War. He soon became a critic of the war and viewed his vote as a "mistake", but did not push for a U.S. withdrawal. By late 2006, he opposed the troop surge of 2007, saying General David Petraeus was "dead, flat wrong" in believing the surge could work.
During his years as a senator, Biden amassed a reputation for being long-winded. political analyst Mark Halperin describes Biden as showing "a persistent tendency to say silly, offensive, and off-putting things".
Biden declared his candidacy for president on January 31, 2007, although he had announced his candidacy to Tim Russert on Meet the Press on January 7. He focused on the war in Iraq and on his record in the Senate as the head of major congressional committees and his experience on foreign policy. He contrasted his foreign policy expertise compared to that of opponent Barack Obama, saying of the latter, "I think he can be ready, but right now I don't believe he is. The presidency is not something that lends itself to on-the-job training." On the campaign trail, he said of Republican Rudy Giuliani, "There's only three things he mentions in a sentence: a noun, and a verb and 9/11." He also said of Barack Obama: "I mean, you got the first mainstream African-American who is articulate and bright and clean and a nice-looking guy, I mean, that's a storybook, man." This remark took second place on Time magazine's list of Top 10 Campaign Gaffes for 2007. He was also criticized for a July 2006 racist remark he made about Indian Americans, when he said: "I've had a great relationship. In Delaware, the largest growth in population is Indian-Americans moving from India. You cannot go to a 7-Eleven or a Dunkin' Donuts unless you have a slight Indian accent. I'm not joking."
Biden failed to gain traction against the high-profile candidacies of Obama and Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton and never rose above single digits in the national polls. On January 3, 2008, Biden placed fifth in the Iowa caucuses, garnering slightly less than one percent of the state delegates. Biden withdrew from the race that evening.
In early August, Obama and Biden met in secret to discuss a possible vice-presidential relationship and on August 22, 2008, Barack Obama announced that Biden would be his running mate. After his selection as a vice presidential candidate, Biden was criticized by his own Roman Catholic Diocese of Wilmington Bishop Michael Saltarelli over his stance on abortion. Biden was soon barred from receiving Holy Communion by the bishop of his original hometown of Scranton, Pennsylvania, because of his support for abortion rights, but Biden did continue to receive Communion at his local Delaware parish.
On October 2, 2008, Biden participated in the campaign's only vice presidential debate with opponent Sarah Palin. Post-debate polls found that while Palin exceeded many voters' expectations, Biden had won the debate overall. On November 4, 2008, Obama was elected President and Biden Vice President of the United States. The Obama-Biden ticket won 365 Electoral College votes to McCain-Palin's 173, and had a 53–46 percent edge in the nationwide popular vote. On November 4, Biden was also re-elected as senator, defeating Republican Christine O'Donnell. Biden made a point of holding off his resignation from the Senate so that he could be sworn in for his seventh term on January 6, 2009. Biden cast his last Senate vote on January 15, supporting the release of the second $350 billion for the Troubled Asset Relief Program. He resigned from the Senate later that day.
Biden chose veteran Democratic lawyer and aide Ron Klain to be his vice-presidential chief of staff, and Time Washington bureau chief Jay Carney to be his director of communications. Biden said he would not model his vice presidency on any of the ones before him, but instead would seek to provide advice and counsel on every critical decision Obama would make. Biden is the first United States Vice President from Delaware and the first Roman Catholic to attain that office. He played a key role in convincing Senator Arlen Specter to switch from the Republican to the Democratic party. He made visits to Iraq about once every two months, and by 2012, Biden had made eight trips there.
Biden continued his penchant for gaffes as Vice President. In late April 2009, Biden said in response to a question during the beginning of the swine flu outbreak, that he would advise family members against travelling on airplanes or subways. This led to a swift retraction from the White House. In the face of persistently rising unemployment through July 2009, Biden acknowledged that the administration had "misread how bad the economy was" and in the same month, Secretary of State Clinton disavowed Biden's remarks disparaging Russia as a power. On March 23, 2010, a microphone picked up Biden telling the president that his signing of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act was "a big fucking deal" during live national news telecasts.
Biden campaigned heavily for Democrats in the 2010 midterm elections, maintaining an attitude of optimism in the face of general predictions of large-scale losses for the party. In March 2011, President Obama asked Biden to lead negotiations between both houses of Congress and the White House in resolving federal spending levels for the rest of the year and avoid a government shutdown. The U.S. debt ceiling crisis developed over the next couple of months, but Biden helped to reach a bipartisan deal in the form of the Budget Control Act of 2011, signed on August 2, 2011.
In May of 2012 Biden told a reporter that he was "absolutely comfortable" with same-sex marriage. He made his statement without administration consent, and Obama and his aides were upset because Obama had planned announce his position several months later, in the build-up to the party convention. Gay rights advocates seized upon the Biden stance and within days, Obama announced that he too supported same-sex marriage. Biden apologized to Obama in private for having spoken out.
Biden was nominated for a second term as vice president on September 6 by voice vote at the 2012 Democratic National Convention in Charlotte, North Carolina. He faced his Republican counterpart, Representative Paul Ryan, in the lone 2012 vice presidential debate on October 11 in Danville, Kentucky. On November 6, 2012, Obama and Bide were elected to second terms. The Obama-Biden ticket won 332 Electoral College votes to Romney-Ryan's 206 and had a 51–47 percent edge in the nationwide popular vote.
In December 2012, Biden was named by Obama to head the Gun Violence Task Force, created to address the causes of gun violence in the United States in the aftermath of the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting. Later that month, during the final days before the country fell off the "fiscal cliff", Biden once more was called upon to negotiate a deal that led to the American Taxpayer Relief Act of 2012 being passed at the start of 2013.
Biden has been mentioned for a possible candidacy in the United States presidential election, 2016, should he decide to run. His main opponent is expected to be Hillary Rodham Clinton. If elected, he would be 74 years of age when inaugurated.
Joe Biden was born on November 20, 1942, at St. Mary's Hospital in Scranton, Pennsylvania. His parents were Joseph Robinette Biden, Sr. (who passed away in 2002 at the age of 87) and Catherine Eugenia "Jean" Biden (née Finnegan, who died in 2010 at the age of 93). He was the first of four siblings in a strong Catholic family. His siblings, in order of their birth, are his sister Valerie and his two brothers James and Frank. Robinette is the family name of his paternal grandmother. Biden's father had suffered several business problems by the time Biden was born, and when the Scranton economy went in the dumps during the 1950s, Biden's father could not find enough work. In 1953, the Biden family moved to Claymont, Delaware, and later to Wilmington, Delaware. Joe Biden Sr. became a used car salesman, and the family's circumstances improved.
Biden attended the University of Delaware in Newark, where he played halfback with the Blue Hens freshman football team. In 1964, while on spring break in the Bahamas, he met Neilia Hunter, who came from an affluent background in Skaneateles, New York. He double majored in history and political science and graduated with a Bachelor of Arts in 1965, ranking 506th of 688 in his class. He then entered Syracuse University College of Law so he could be closer to Neilia. During his first year, he was accused of having plagiarized 5 of 15 pages of a law review article. Biden was permitted to retake the course after receiving an 'F' grade. He graduated in 1968, ranking 76th of 85 in his class and was admitted to the Delaware Bar in 1969.
Biden received five student draft deferments, with the first coming in late 1963 and the last in early 1968, during the Vietnam War. In April 1968, he was reclassified by the Selective Service System as not available for service due to having had asthma as a teenager. He chose not to drink alcohol, having observed problems in his own family by others. Biden suffered from stuttering from childhood and into his twenties and he overcame it by reciting poetry in front of a mirror.
On August 27, 1966, Biden married Neilia Hunter in a Roman Catholic ceremony despite her parents' objection. The couple had three children, Joseph R. "Beau" Biden III (born 1969), Robert Hunter (born 1970), and Naomi Christina (born 1971).
During 1968, Biden clerked for six months at a Wilmington law firm headed by prominent local Republican William Prickett and considered himself to be a Republican".Local Republicans tried to recruit Biden as a candidate, but he resisted due to his dislike Richard Nixon. He registered as an Independent instead.
In 1969, Biden resumed practicing law in Wilmington, first as a public defender and then at a Democratic firm. Biden switched his registration to Democratic. Biden also started his own firm, Biden and Walsh and he supplemented his income by managing properties. Later that year, he ran as a Democrat for the New Castle County Council and won. Biden served on the County Council from 1970 to 1972 while continuing his private law practice.
Biden ran in the 1972 U.S. Senate election in Delaware in a campaign that had little money and was given no chance of winning. His campaign was managed by his sister Valerie Biden Owens (who would go on to manage his future campaigns). He received some assistance from the AFL-CIO. Initially he trailed in the polls by almost 30 percentage points, but his energy level and his ability to connect with voters' emotions gave him an advantage over the ready-to-retire incumbent opponent. Biden won the November 7, 1972, election in an upset by a margin of 3,162 votes.
On December 18, 1972, a few weeks after the election, Biden's wife and one-year-old daughter were killed in an automobile accident while Christmas shopping in Hockessin, Delaware. Neilia Biden's station wagon was hit by a tractor-trailer as she pulled out from an intersection; the truck driver was cleared of any wrongdoing. Biden's sons Beau and Hunter survived the accident and were taken to the hospital in fair condition. Beau suffered a broken leg and Hunter had a minor skull fracture and other head injuries. Biden considered resigning to care for his family, but was persuaded not to by Senate Majority Leader Mike Mansfield. Biden was sworn in the following month at age 30 (the minimum age required to hold the office), making him the sixth-youngest senator in U.S. history.
To be at home every day for his young sons, Biden began the practice of commuting every day by Amtrak train for 1½ hours each way from his home in the Wilmington suburbs to Washington, D.C., which he continued to do throughout his Senate career. In remembrance of his wife and daughter, Biden does not work on December 18, the anniversary of the accident. Biden's son, Beau, became Delaware Attorney General and an Army Judge Advocate serving in Iraq and his younger son, Hunter, became a Washington attorney and lobbyist.
In 1975, Biden met Jill Tracy Jacobs, who grew up in Willow Grove, Pennsylvania, and would become a teacher in Delaware. They had met on a blind date arranged by Biden's brother. On June 17, 1977, Biden and Jacobs married at the Chapel at the United Nations in New York.[18] They have one daughter, Ashley Blazer (born 1981), who became a social worker.
Biden became ranking minority member of the U.S. Senate Committee on the Judiciary in 1981. Seven years later he ran for the 1988 Democratic presidential nomination, declaring his candidacy at the Wilmington train station on June 9, 1987. At first his campaign showed some promise, but by August 1987, the campaign was trailing those of Michael Dukakis and Dick Gephardt. In September 1987, the campaign ran into trouble when he was accused of plagiarizing a speech that had been made earlier that year by Neil Kinnock, leader of the British Labour Party.Biden was soon found to also copied passages from a 1967 speech by Robert F. Kennedy (for which Biden aides took the blame) and a short phrase from the 1961 inaugural address of John F. Kennedy, as well as a 1976 passage from Hubert H. Humphrey. A few days later, Biden's plagiarism incident in law school came to public light. Video was also released showing that when earlier questioned by a New Hampshire resident about his grades in law school, Biden had stated that he had graduated in the "top half" of his class, that he had attended law school on a full scholarship, and that he had received three degrees in college, each of which was false. He withdrew from the nomination race on September 23, 1987.
In February 1988, after suffering from several episodes of severe neck pain, Biden was given lifesaving surgery to correct an intracranial berry aneurysm. While recuperating, he suffered a pulmonary embolism. Another operation to repair a second aneurysm, which had caused no symptoms but was also at risk from bursting, was performed in May 1988. Biden has had no recurrences or effects from the aneurysms since then.
Biden was a long-time member of the U.S. Senate Committee on the Judiciary, which he chaired from 1987 until 1995. As chairman, Biden presided over the two most contentious U.S. Supreme Court confirmation hearings in history, those for Robert Bork in 1987 and Clarence Thomas in 1991. Biden was critical of the actions of Independent Counsel Kenneth Starr during the 1990s Whitewater controversy and Lewinsky scandal investigations. He voted to acquit during the impeachment of President Bill Clinton.
Biden was also a long-time member of the U.S. Senate Committee on Foreign Relations. In 1997, he became the ranking minority member and chaired the committee in January 2001 and from June 2001 through 2003. When Democrats re-took control of the Senate following the 2006 elections, Biden again assumed the top spot on the committee in 2007. Biden voted against authorization for the Gulf War in 1991, but he was a strong supporter of the 2001 war in Afghanistan, saying "Whatever it takes, we should do it." On the question of Iraq, Biden stated in 2002 that Saddam Hussein was a threat to national security, and that there was no option but to eliminate that threat. In October 2002, Biden voted in favor of the Authorization for Use of Military Force Against Iraq, justifying the Iraq War. He soon became a critic of the war and viewed his vote as a "mistake", but did not push for a U.S. withdrawal. By late 2006, he opposed the troop surge of 2007, saying General David Petraeus was "dead, flat wrong" in believing the surge could work.
During his years as a senator, Biden amassed a reputation for being long-winded. political analyst Mark Halperin describes Biden as showing "a persistent tendency to say silly, offensive, and off-putting things".
Biden declared his candidacy for president on January 31, 2007, although he had announced his candidacy to Tim Russert on Meet the Press on January 7. He focused on the war in Iraq and on his record in the Senate as the head of major congressional committees and his experience on foreign policy. He contrasted his foreign policy expertise compared to that of opponent Barack Obama, saying of the latter, "I think he can be ready, but right now I don't believe he is. The presidency is not something that lends itself to on-the-job training." On the campaign trail, he said of Republican Rudy Giuliani, "There's only three things he mentions in a sentence: a noun, and a verb and 9/11." He also said of Barack Obama: "I mean, you got the first mainstream African-American who is articulate and bright and clean and a nice-looking guy, I mean, that's a storybook, man." This remark took second place on Time magazine's list of Top 10 Campaign Gaffes for 2007. He was also criticized for a July 2006 racist remark he made about Indian Americans, when he said: "I've had a great relationship. In Delaware, the largest growth in population is Indian-Americans moving from India. You cannot go to a 7-Eleven or a Dunkin' Donuts unless you have a slight Indian accent. I'm not joking."
Biden failed to gain traction against the high-profile candidacies of Obama and Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton and never rose above single digits in the national polls. On January 3, 2008, Biden placed fifth in the Iowa caucuses, garnering slightly less than one percent of the state delegates. Biden withdrew from the race that evening.
In early August, Obama and Biden met in secret to discuss a possible vice-presidential relationship and on August 22, 2008, Barack Obama announced that Biden would be his running mate. After his selection as a vice presidential candidate, Biden was criticized by his own Roman Catholic Diocese of Wilmington Bishop Michael Saltarelli over his stance on abortion. Biden was soon barred from receiving Holy Communion by the bishop of his original hometown of Scranton, Pennsylvania, because of his support for abortion rights, but Biden did continue to receive Communion at his local Delaware parish.
On October 2, 2008, Biden participated in the campaign's only vice presidential debate with opponent Sarah Palin. Post-debate polls found that while Palin exceeded many voters' expectations, Biden had won the debate overall. On November 4, 2008, Obama was elected President and Biden Vice President of the United States. The Obama-Biden ticket won 365 Electoral College votes to McCain-Palin's 173, and had a 53–46 percent edge in the nationwide popular vote. On November 4, Biden was also re-elected as senator, defeating Republican Christine O'Donnell. Biden made a point of holding off his resignation from the Senate so that he could be sworn in for his seventh term on January 6, 2009. Biden cast his last Senate vote on January 15, supporting the release of the second $350 billion for the Troubled Asset Relief Program. He resigned from the Senate later that day.
Biden chose veteran Democratic lawyer and aide Ron Klain to be his vice-presidential chief of staff, and Time Washington bureau chief Jay Carney to be his director of communications. Biden said he would not model his vice presidency on any of the ones before him, but instead would seek to provide advice and counsel on every critical decision Obama would make. Biden is the first United States Vice President from Delaware and the first Roman Catholic to attain that office. He played a key role in convincing Senator Arlen Specter to switch from the Republican to the Democratic party. He made visits to Iraq about once every two months, and by 2012, Biden had made eight trips there.
Biden continued his penchant for gaffes as Vice President. In late April 2009, Biden said in response to a question during the beginning of the swine flu outbreak, that he would advise family members against travelling on airplanes or subways. This led to a swift retraction from the White House. In the face of persistently rising unemployment through July 2009, Biden acknowledged that the administration had "misread how bad the economy was" and in the same month, Secretary of State Clinton disavowed Biden's remarks disparaging Russia as a power. On March 23, 2010, a microphone picked up Biden telling the president that his signing of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act was "a big fucking deal" during live national news telecasts.
Biden campaigned heavily for Democrats in the 2010 midterm elections, maintaining an attitude of optimism in the face of general predictions of large-scale losses for the party. In March 2011, President Obama asked Biden to lead negotiations between both houses of Congress and the White House in resolving federal spending levels for the rest of the year and avoid a government shutdown. The U.S. debt ceiling crisis developed over the next couple of months, but Biden helped to reach a bipartisan deal in the form of the Budget Control Act of 2011, signed on August 2, 2011.
In May of 2012 Biden told a reporter that he was "absolutely comfortable" with same-sex marriage. He made his statement without administration consent, and Obama and his aides were upset because Obama had planned announce his position several months later, in the build-up to the party convention. Gay rights advocates seized upon the Biden stance and within days, Obama announced that he too supported same-sex marriage. Biden apologized to Obama in private for having spoken out.
Biden was nominated for a second term as vice president on September 6 by voice vote at the 2012 Democratic National Convention in Charlotte, North Carolina. He faced his Republican counterpart, Representative Paul Ryan, in the lone 2012 vice presidential debate on October 11 in Danville, Kentucky. On November 6, 2012, Obama and Bide were elected to second terms. The Obama-Biden ticket won 332 Electoral College votes to Romney-Ryan's 206 and had a 51–47 percent edge in the nationwide popular vote.
In December 2012, Biden was named by Obama to head the Gun Violence Task Force, created to address the causes of gun violence in the United States in the aftermath of the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting. Later that month, during the final days before the country fell off the "fiscal cliff", Biden once more was called upon to negotiate a deal that led to the American Taxpayer Relief Act of 2012 being passed at the start of 2013.
Biden has been mentioned for a possible candidacy in the United States presidential election, 2016, should he decide to run. His main opponent is expected to be Hillary Rodham Clinton. If elected, he would be 74 years of age when inaugurated.