Only the security device reveals that in a detour of a wooded and winding highway of Willmington, a city of 70,000 inhabitants in the State of Delaware, is Joe Biden's campaign headquarters. The Obama-era vice president just formally became the Democratic Party candidate for the November elections with a mission to prevent a second term from Donald Trump. He has done so without leaving his home, a large property that is located on the other side of a control and where he has been held since the pandemic practically began. Biden has achieved what he has longed for for decades, the nomination, in the strangest and most unexpected way that he could imagine and faces the final battle with his best political weapons deactivated: personal treatment.

Biden's long career is largely defined by where he has developed it, the second smallest state in the country, a territory of less than a million inhabitants where politics is carried out door to door, remembering that sick relative, committing to fixing a pothole in the road, going to family restaurants on time every Saturday.

“He would come to breakfast with his two children, people would come up to him to ask them questions and he was nice to everyone. The whole family has always been very cordial. Beau, the son, was the salt of the earth, an exceptional man, I loved him very much, ”says August Muzzi, the owner of Angelo's Luncheonette, a small restaurant decorated with Elvi's photographs that has been open for almost 53 years. than Biden in politics.

He was born in 1942 in Scranton (Pennsylvania) but his family moved to Delaware in the 1950s and he was elected senator for the first time in November 1972, at the age of 29. A few weeks later, his wife, Neilia, and their one-year-old daughter, Naomi, were killed in a car accident in which the other two children, Beau and Hunter, were seriously injured. Biden, was the political revelation of the moment, a young Democratic star, ended up swearing in the position in the hospital, next to the bed of one of his children, in one of those images that have been recorded forever.

Five years later he married an English teacher, Jill Jacobs - today, Jill Biden - and they had a daughter together, Ashley. The boys, who lost their mother very young, always considered her also a mother. The eldest son, Beau, was called to continue the political saga. A veteran of Iraq, he was a Delaware attorney general and was running for governor when a brain tumor fatally took his life in 2015. He was 46 years old.

It is impossible not to link these tragedies to the closeness and empathy that the veteran politician knows how to transmit to the citizens who approach him, a kind of sincere benevolence that the Democrats have not tired of praising these days during the convention that has crowned him as a candidate. .

Is that the formula with which one wins the elections for the most powerful presidency in the world in 2020? Despite leading the polls, he seemed an unpromising candidate in the primaries, out of time. Among more than 20 aspirants of unprecedented diversity and in a moment of shift to the left of the party, a 77-year-old white Catholic man and a centrist speech ended up winning, without great blows of effect in the speeches or the overwhelming energy they showed. others on stage.

To understand the appeal of the Biden, you had to wait to see him after the rallies, to see the warmth with which he hugged the families of war veterans, how he spoke at length with the elderly, asking them questions. One day in December in San Antonio, Texas, he spent much more time greeting attendees than he did speaking from the stage. Embracing men, women and children is part of the profession of politician, but not all convey the same authenticity.

In hindsight, a video of him talking to a child with stuttering problems went viral last winter in New Hampshire. Biden, who was also a stutterer, asks for the phone number because, he says, he usually works with people in this situation, and says he understands what is happening to him. “Don't let this define you, you are a handsome boy and smart as hell and you are going to get over it. I know there are bullies in school who mess with you, that will happen. I'm going to ask for your phone number, I don't expect you to answer because I know how hard it is for you to talk on the phone, but I promise you'll get over it ”. That kid, Brayden Harrington, spoke at the convention last Thursday before millions of viewers. He stumbled for a moment, but kept going.

All that Joe Biden is best at during a campaign, in short, the coronavirus crisis is stealing from him, which makes close contact and hand kissing impossible when precisely the candidate in question has made prudence in this crisis one of his political arguments in front of the president, who has tried at all times to minimize the situation. "If he is reelected we will know what will happen, the number of infections and deaths will continue to be very high, more family businesses will close," he warned this Thursday during his acceptance speech.

In front of him, he has a man, Donald Trump, forged in reality television and a lover of the masses, who is able to speak for about two hours on stage, imitate voices, laugh out loud, shout ... Those great shows have also been taken from him for the pandemic. At the moment, Biden is comfortably leading the polls, but two months into the campaign, those remaining until Election Day, November 3, seem like an eternity. Next week it is the Republicans who hold their conclave to crown Trump as a candidate. Then it will be seen how that melee is free, more in the distance than ever.

The frustrated races

Joe Biden ran as a Democratic candidate for the US presidency for the first time in 1988 and the race ended in a traumatic way for the senator, who had to retire due to a plagiarism controversy. In 2008 he tried his luck again, but the pull of Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton showed that he had no options and very soon, after the first disappointing result in the Iowa caucuses , he dropped out and supported Obama. By winning, he made him vice president.

Eight years of number two in the Government were shaping up to be the definitive springboard for the primaries, but the 2016 campaign seemed like the time reserved for Clinton and, in addition, the death of his son Beau left him without the courage to compete. In one of his political memoirs ( Promises to keep , 2007) he states: “In 1987 I did not see myself still playing the role of president, but towards the end I had an idea of ​​how I would get the nomination. When I started the campaign in 2005 it was the other way around. I felt prepared for work, but was not sure how to get my message across to the voter amid the media noise. " Now he believes the time has come for everything, to know that it is now or never.

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