Faith in Biden lives on at home

Joe and Jill Biden, on December 31 before the Banks Seafood Kitchen restaurant, located on the Christina River promenade, in Wilmington, Delaware. STEFANI REYNOLDS / New York Times / ContactoPhoto (STEFANI REYNOLDS / New York Times / ContactoPhoto)

Joe Biden's smile is everywhere in Wilmington, Delaware. They hang pictures of him in restaurants, supermarkets, and even at the shoe-shine stand at the railway station. There are even life-size reproductions in souvenir shops. A turkey, cheese and spicy mustard sandwich bears his name and, although he is a teetotaler, a triple IPA beer honors how much he used the train to get to and from Washington, always in time for family dinner. He has done so every day since he was sworn in as a senator at age 29, shortly after his first wife and their daughter were killed in a car accident.

But Wilmington doesn't just live on the memories of old Joe, when he wasn't president of the United States yet.

There are also many sightings of the Bidens here since he was sworn in just 12 months ago.

Of the 52 weekends of his first year in the White House, 26 have been spent in Delaware, in its most populous city or in the beach residence, in Rehoboth Beach.

The rest have been distributed as follows: 13 at Camp David, 10 at the White House, two abroad and one, Thanksgiving, on Nantucket.

Only Bush Jr. ran out of the District of Columbia on Friday more often than he did (heading, in his case, to Texas).

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It was the most repeated phrase.

The second: “he is one of us”.

Both were pronounced, for example, by Linda Seidenstat, who presumes to know him "personally all her life", since her husband, now deceased, "taught her at the University of Delaware",

also of the first lady, Jill Biden , his second wife. There, in addition, the papers corresponding to his 36 years as a senator are kept. Seidenstat works at Janssen's supermarket, the Bidens' favorite, where they sell the famous sandwich. It is in the commercial area of ​​Greenville, an upper-class neighborhood, about two kilometers from the armored family home. Janssen's is one of the spots on the

that goes through emblematic places, sentimental scenes of the life of the politician, establishments whose coffee does not forgive from time to time and stores in which on a certain occasion she bought a necklace.

The itinerary is designed by the Tourist Office.

Its executive director, Jennifer Boes, explains in the offices of the city center, even more deserted than usual due to low temperatures and the pandemic, which has emptied dozens of commercial premises, which received an avalanche of visitors after the electoral victory. .

A year later, the enthusiasm has subsided, although "the claim remains attractive."

"Not all cities can boast of having a president," he adds.

Much less, if they are as small as Wilmington or are in places as demographically insignificant as Delaware, which contributes one million inhabitants to the total census of 330 million.

Delaware is known in the US because it was the first State to give

the Constitution

in 1787

(hence the nickname

for its admittedly lax regulation, which makes it a national tax shelter (its other alias is

because

there are more companies than inhabitants);

and for being, as a panel in the Local History Museum recalls, still closed due to the coronavirus, a favorite home for credit card companies, thanks to a favorable law from the 1980s.

“It is natural that people here have patience with him. They are aware that they will probably never have another White House tenant neighbor. Also, it's safe to say that Biden has held many of our babies. And that almost all my Facebook friends have a photo with him, ”explains Jonathan Russ, a professor at the University of Delaware specializing in corporate and state history, with a broad smile, before one of the soups that make the Pizza restaurant By Elizabeth's is also featured on Biden's tour. "Because of these payments, politics is exercised by proximity," adds Russ, who recalls that his compatriots have only one seat in the House of Representatives, although they are constitutionally entitled to two members in the Senate,the same as much more populous states such as California or Texas (perhaps for this reason, the professor ventures, they rushed so much to approve the Magna Carta). “Here we appreciate Biden's working-class origins, that he attended our university and not an Ivy League one, and that for so many years, as a single father with a recent tragedy, he was not seduced by the siren songs of Washington".

Jonathan Russ, historian, photographed in Wilmington, Delaware.

From those times comes his most famous nickname:

which refers to the railway company that took him and brought him every day (three hours of travel in total).

Edward, a maintenance worker at the Wilmington station, who obviously ended up dubbed its most conspicuous user, said Wednesday that he hasn't been seen around much since he was sworn in.

In the past year, Amtrak Joe could change his alias to

in honor of the helicopter that takes him out of the White House's "golden cage" on Fridays and drops him off at a makeshift helipad in Brandywine Creek State Park. .

With him, his family and an entourage of secret service agents, White House workers and journalists travel, which has earned him criticism in times of travel restricted by the pandemic. That much traffic, at least, generates business in Wilmington. The reporters, some 15 of them, are all staying together in downtown hotels, providing a pandemic respite for the city's ailing hospitality sector.

There, the press waits for the big moment of the weekend: the Sunday mass in the church of San José, which Biden, a devout Catholic, does not forgive. Later, it is customary for him to visit the grave of his first-born Beau, who died in 2015 at the age of 46 from a brain tumor, in the parish cemetery. Another of the strong points is Sunday dinner, with all the offspring, in the house that, according to legend, he designed himself and that is located in a quiet residential neighborhood today taken over by frequency jammers and undercover agents.

The residents of Wilmington have become accustomed to seeing the line of high-powered black cars pass by on their roads.

For security reasons, he no longer hangs around the places he used to frequent.

Places like Charcoal Pit, a greasy roadside burger joint where he once stopped as vice president to eat with Obama.

Charcoal Pit Burger, in Wilmington, last Wednesday.IS

Other sites show off, in the center of the city, a more recent relationship, forged from the presidential race. These include the riverside promenade (victory was declared there and he was recently seen eating at a fish restaurant there), the distinguished Dupont Hotel, where he gave several speeches (although its business manager, Nora Baughan, is quick to clarify that "the Dupont has housed other presidents and lacks ideology") or The Queen concert hall. Silenced by the pandemic, it served in 2020 as the headquarters of the campaign that returned power to the Democrats. In the dim, empty space early Wednesday morning, Alison Wier, director of sales, blamed Biden's failures in his first year on the "huge mess he inherited,"as well as friendly fire from Democratic Senators Kyrsten Sinema and Joe Manchin.

Later, the Mexican Elba Yerena, whose husband opted for Trump, would explain that Latinos overwhelmingly supported Biden in Delaware, but now she doesn't know what to think.

"He promises and promises, but he doesn't deliver," he lamented.

Venezuelan driver Jean Carlos Peña went further in his disapproval of the president, above all for "his mishandling of inflation, which affects us all where it hurts the most, our pockets."

Both were able to verify that same afternoon that, at the second press conference held by Biden since he took over the country, there was no trace, after two hours of questions, on the issue of immigration, which counted so much in the campaign.

Another to whom reality also ended up proving him right on Wednesday was Ricky

Smith, who prides himself on having dealt with the politician "since the early sixties", when they were both "kids" (now they do not maintain contact). President of the Delaware chapter of the NAACP (National Association for the Advancement of Colored People), Smith considers that Biden "has disappointed black voters, especially with the issue of the right to vote, which is one of the great dangers to our democracy. “He has the Republicans in front of him and in his own party he finds himself in a very difficult position between the acolytes of Bernie Sanders and the more moderate members.” Overnight, the Freedom to Vote Act and the John Lewis Voting Rights Act ran aground again on the Capitol breakwater. One year later,there is a storm of perfect immobility capable even of freezing the stainless smile of the neighbor Biden.

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