Joe Biden

by Beatrice Gormley

  Most alarming of all, President Trump seemed to be signaling that he would not accept defeat, even if Biden won the election. At the opening of the Republican Convention, Trump had declared, “The only way they can take this election away from us is if this is a rigged election.” At a rally in Nevada on September 12, Trump opened his speech with, “I am going to start by saying that the Democrats are trying to rig this election because it’s the only way they are going to win.”

  At a news conference on September 23, President Trump refused to commit to a peaceful transfer of power after the November election. He repeated the false claim that mail-in ballots were open to fraud. Meanwhile, the polls continued to show that nationally, Joe Biden was keeping a steady lead over Donald Trump. In several of the battleground states—Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin—Biden seemed likely to win. In Florida and Arizona, he was even with Trump.

  By the end of September, 90 percent of likely voters had already made up their minds, and some of them had already voted. Although Election Day was officially November 3, it had evolved into “Election Season.” Early voting started on September 18 in Minnesota, South Dakota, and Wyoming, and only fifteen of the fifty states had no early voting.

  * * *

  Besides campaigning for reelection, Republicans were striving to achieve one particular goal before the end of President Trump’s term. They hoped to place another conservative justice on the Supreme Court, giving the conservatives a firm 6–3 majority. Then they might finally be able to overturn Roe v. Wade and the Affordable Care Act (Obamacare). Also, if the presidential election results were extremely close, as they had been in 2000, the Supreme Court might make the final decision about whether Joe Biden or Donald Trump had won.

  On September 18, Associate Justice Ruth Bader Ginsberg died at the age of eighty-seven, so now a seat on the court was vacant. The next day, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell announced that the Senate would vote on Trump’s nominee for the court before the election. The following week President Trump named his choice, appellate judge Amy Coney Barrett.

  Democrats were outraged. McConnell and the Republican senators had claimed it was wrong for President Obama to nominate a Supreme Court justice during 2016, his last year in office. Now these same senators insisted that it was the president’s duty to fill a vacancy on the court. But no matter how much the Democrats protested, Trump and the Senate did have the legal right to nominate and confirm a new Supreme Court justice. On October 26, Judge Barrett was confirmed by the Republican majority in the Senate.

  * * *

  The first presidential debate took place on September 29 at Case Reserve Western University in Cleveland, Ohio, moderated by Chris Wallace of Fox News. Many observers judged it the worst presidential debate ever. For over an hour and a half, Trump interrupted and talked loudly over Biden, in spite of the moderator’s reminders that both sides had agreed not to interrupt. A few times Biden lost his temper, exclaiming, “Will you shut up, man?” and calling President Trump a “clown.”

  However, Joe Biden did manage to make a few points between Trump’s interruptions. When Trump tried to throw him off-balance by slandering Hunter, Biden turned and spoke directly into the cameras. “This is not about my family or his family,” he told the audience watching at home. “It’s about your family, the American people. He doesn’t want to talk about what you need.”

  In spite of the disorderly debate, two meaningful facts came out: Trump still refused to agree that he would accept the results of the election, and he repeated false claims that mail-in ballots were often fraudulent. He also refused to condemn violence committed by white supremacist groups, and even seemed to encourage them.

  And only a week after the debate, the FBI had shocking news for the country. They had arrested thirteen members of an armed militia group that had been plotting to kidnap the governor of Michigan, Gretchen Whitmer. The domestic terrorists’ goal had been to take over the state government and launch a civil war before the election.

  * * *

  In the debate, President Trump had mocked Biden for wearing a mask to protect against COVID-19. Two days later he assured the guests at a charity dinner that “the end of the pandemic is in sight.” The next morning, October 2, Trump announced that he and the First Lady had tested positive for the COVID-19 virus. That evening he was admitted to Walter Reed National Military Medical Center.

  President Trump was given oxygen at least once and was treated with a combination of medications usually reserved for seriously ill patients. However, he insisted in tweets and on video that he was recovering quickly. In fact, he left the hospital only three days later, posed on the White House balcony removing his mask, and urged the nation not to be afraid of the coronavirus.

  People diagnosed with COVID-19 are advised by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) to isolate themselves for at least ten days after the first symptoms. However, on October 10, President Trump declared at a rally at the White House that he was “immune” and not infectious. On October 12 he launched a strenuous week of back-to-back, in-person rallies in Florida, Pennsylvania, Iowa, North Carolina, and Wisconsin, for starters. He intended to hold two or three such events every day until November 3.

  In contrast, Joe Biden continued to campaign steadily but safely. In Toledo, Ohio, on October 12, he spoke outside, in a United Auto Workers union hall parking lot, to an audience in American-made cars. Biden reminded them how in 2009, during the Great Recession, he and President Obama had rescued the US auto industry. At the applause lines, the listeners honked their approval.

  In spite of Trump’s efforts to de-emphasize the COVID-19 pandemic, it was topmost on the minds of most Americans. And most Americans blamed President Trump for mishandling the US response to the disease. It had been revealed recently that Trump had known since January how deadly the coronavirus was, but had deliberately downplayed the danger.

  Since March, the lethal virus had disrupted Americans’ lives, and it continued to do so. The school year had begun, but a large proportion of schools still could not hold in-person classes, or offered them only half the time, in a “hybrid” schedule. By October 14, more than 216,000 Americans had died of the disease, and more than a million worldwide had lost a father or mother, a brother or sister, a grandparent, a dear friend.

  And although, as Trump pointed out, the stock market was doing well, ordinary Americans were struggling to make ends meet. The money from the one-time direct payments to individuals from the CARES Act had run out quickly, and the increased unemployment benefits had ended, or would end soon. A chorus of economists, corporate executives, and business leaders, as well as workers, warned that the US economy faced disaster unless Congress passed a second economic stimulus bill. They urged the president and the Senate to work with the House of Representatives and pass a rescue package before the election.

  On October 7, Senator Kamala Harris had met Vice President Mike Pence at the University of Utah in Salt Lake City for the vice presidential debate. She’d called the Trump administration’s response to the pandemic “the greatest failure of any presidential administration in the history of our country.” She’d also accused Trump and the Republican Senate of ramming through the confirmation of a conservative Supreme Court justice, rather than passing a desperately needed economic stimulus bill for the American people.

  * * *

  Joe Biden’s lead over Donald Trump continued to grow slightly, but there was concern that no matter who won, the result might not be clear for several days or even weeks. That would be different from most past presidential elections, when the results had been clear by late on election night, or early the next morning. Normally, by then the winning candidate had been declared, and the losing candidate had conceded.

  However, in 2020, about one-third of voters—many more Democrats than Republicans—planned to cast their vote for president by mail. Some of the key “swing states,” in which the election was expected to be close, were not prepa
red to count all the mail-in ballots quickly. And so the winner in those states, especially Pennsylvania, Michigan, and Wisconsin, might not be declared for several days. Trump, perhaps seeing an advantage for Republicans, demanded that the presidential election must be decided by the tallies on election night. Actually, the president had no power to enforce this demand.

  As it turned out, the tallies on Tuesday evening did favor President Trump. Late that night he announced that he had won, and that he wanted “all voting” to stop. Of course all the voting had already taken place. But tens of millions of votes were still to be counted.

  On Wednesday afternoon, Joe Biden stated, calmly but very firmly, “Every vote must be counted.” It was not the will of Donald Trump, or of any candidate, that would determine who became the next president of the United States. It was the will of the people. “And their will alone.”

  This was a historic election, in that more people had cast votes for president than ever before in the history of the US. As the election workers in every state of the Union kept on counting, the mail-in ballots began shifting the numbers in Joe Biden’s favor. But the results were still not clear on Wednesday night—or on Thursday. Or on Friday.

  To Biden’s joy, it was the state of Pennsylvania, where he was born, that finally clinched his victory. On Saturday morning, November 7, the major TV networks announced that Biden had won Pennsylvania’s twenty electoral votes, putting him over the 270 needed to win the election. The outcome in a few more states was uncertain, but Joseph R. Biden Jr. was the president-elect of the United States. He would be inaugurated as the forty-sixth president on January 20, 2021.

  On Saturday evening, Kamala Harris, who would become the first female vice president as well as the first vice president of color, greeted a crowd in Wilmington so excited they could hardly stop cheering to let her speak. After her remarks, Joe Biden jogged smiling onto the stage. “I pledge to be a president who seeks not to divide, but to unify,” he told the nation. He promised to work as hard for the people who had not voted for him as for those who had.

  When Joe had finished speaking, his family and Kamala’s family joined the victorious two on the stage. They all milled happily around, swaying to the music and watching the celebratory fireworks display.

  * * *

  At long last, Joseph R. Biden Jr. had achieved the dream he’d once cherished as a twelve-year-old boy. But he was taking on an enormous task. Of all the US presidents, only Abraham Lincoln, on the brink of the Civil War, and Franklin Roosevelt, in the Great Depression and then World War II, had faced more serious crises. Joe Biden knew this, and even during the run for the White House, he had been planning how he and his team would go about running the government.

  First of all, the country was deeply divided. Although more than 75 million Americans had voted to make Joe Biden the next president, more than 70 million had voted to keep Donald Trump in office. Could President Biden gain the whole country’s trust? Biden would need to prove that he was president for all Americans, not only his political allies, or the people who could do him favors. Fortunately, this inclusive way of leading came naturally to Joe Biden—it was the kind of leader he’d been even as a young boy.

  Then there was the ongoing pandemic. Biden had already reached out to many experts and gathered a team ready to take charge of controlling the coronavirus. However, the Trump administration’s advice and actions about COVID-19 had been so confusing that large numbers of Americans were not following the CDC guidelines. And only half of Americans said they were willing to be vaccinated—when a vaccine was available. In order for the pandemic to be controlled, a majority of Americans would need to cooperate.

  Once the pandemic was under control, the national economy would be able to recover. Until then, the nation’s businesses and workers, as well as the cities and states, would need ongoing support from the government. To pay for such assistance, Joe Biden proposed to cancel the tax breaks Trump had given the wealthy and to raise taxes on anyone earning more than $400,000 per year. The Biden administration would need the cooperation of Congress to pass such legislation.

  Joe Biden’s age was another concern, and he had said that he viewed himself as a “bridge” to a younger generation of Democratic leaders. Although Biden was fit, healthy, and unusually energetic, he was the oldest person ever to be elected US president. Even Ronald Reagan was only seventy-seven as he left office in 1989. Would Biden’s health and energy hold up under the enormous strain of the presidency? In case it did not, he was confident that his vice president, Kamala Harris, was “ready to lead.”

  Global climate change was an issue that the Trump administration had simply denied and ignored for four years. But as if to force Americans to pay attention to this mounting threat, the West Coast had burst into flames during the last months of the 2020 presidential campaign. In California, Oregon, and Washington, forest fires swept over millions of acres, driving many thousands of people from their homes and choking the air across the entire region.

  At the same time, the southeastern US was battered by hurricanes and floods, and the western half of the country suffered drought. Climate scientists agreed that the devastating fires, the rise in sea levels, and the unusually violent storms were all caused by higher global temperatures. And the rise in global temperatures was caused by increased greenhouse gases released into the atmosphere by burning fossil fuels.

  The United States bore a large part of the responsibility for global climate change, being the second-biggest emitter of greenhouse gases. Joe Biden planned to launch a trillion-dollar program to replace fossil fuels in the US with clean energy. Importantly, this huge effort would also stimulate the economy, by creating millions of new jobs. Just as important, the US needed to set an example for the rest of the world.

  Still another pressing problem: the United States’ relations with other countries were in disarray. For many years before 2016, the US had been the country that other nations looked to for leadership. By 2020, the Trump administration had strained relationships with most of the US’s traditional allies. And the US had lost the respect of many nations, especially because of Trump’s mishandling of the COVID-19 pandemic. Fortunately, Joe Biden had deep expertise, from his years as senator and then as vice president, in working with other countries, and he was determined to restore the US’s position in the world.

  During Joe Biden’s long career in public service, he had faced and overcome many challenges. But it seemed that his greatest challenges lay ahead.

  Acknowledgments

  Many thanks to Karen Nagel and all the editorial and production staff at Aladdin, who polished this book and made it shine. And special thanks to my husband, Robert J. Gormley, who picked Biden for a winner early on.

  More from the Author

  John McCain

  Pope Francis

  Barack Obama

  George W. Bush

  Nelson Mandela

  Diana, Princess of Wales

  About the Author

  BEATRICE GORMLEY has written a number of books for young readers, including several titles in the Childhood of Famous Americans and Childhood of World Figures series, as well as biographies of John McCain, Barack Obama, Pope Francis, George W. Bush, Laura Bush, and Nelson Mandela. She lives in Westport, Massachusetts.

  ALADDIN

  Simon & Schuster, New York

  Visit us at simonandschuster.com/kids

  www.SimonandSchuster.com/Authors/Beatrice-Gormley

  Sources

  Books

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  Goldstein, Joel K. The White House Vice Presidency: The Path to Significance, Mond
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  Levingston, Steven. Barack and Joe: The Making of an Extraordinary Partnership. New York: Hachette Book Group, 2019.

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  Witcover, Jules. Joe Biden: A Life of Trial and Redemption. New York: HarperCollins, 2010.

  Woodward, Bob. Rage. New York: Simon & Schuster, 2020.

  MAGAZINES AND NEWSPAPERS

  Associated Press. “In Florida, Trump Goes Back on Campaign Trail.” Boston Globe, October 13, 2020.

  Ballhaus, Rebecca, Sadie Gurman, and Dustin Volz. “Rough Transcript Shows Trump Pressed Ukraine to ‘look into’ Joe Biden’s Son.” The Wall Street Journal, September 25, 2019.

  Bidgood, Jess. “Vote Count Drama Ends with Home State Victory.” Boston Globe, Nov. 8, 2020.

  Blake, Aaron. “4 Takeaways from the Final Night of the Democratic National Convention.” The Washington Post, August 20, 2020.

  Bouie, Jamelle. “Trump’s Perverse Campaign Strategy.” New York Times, September 16, 2020.

  Bowden, Mark. “The Salesman.” The Atlantic, October 2010.