It took Joe Biden three attempts to become the Democratic party’s presidential candidate before he clinched the nomination earlier this year at the age of 77. This time round he almost failed again.
For much of the Democratic primary campaign, it appeared as though Mr Biden’s chances were doomed. He lost spectacularly in the Iowa caucuses and finished fifth in the New Hampshire primary as he struggled to break through in a crowded field.
Despite his weaknesses as a candidate, some pollsters predicted Mr Biden would win the presidential election in a blowout by not only rebuilding the “blue wall” of Pennsylvania, Michigan and Wisconsin, but also flipping Republican strongholds in the south.
By that yardstick, he came up short. Ballots are still being counted in the “blue wall” battlegrounds, but states such as Texas and Florida — which had been targeted by his campaign — were called for Donald Trump.
Early on it seemed the Democratic nomination would not go to Mr Biden but to one of the other contenders: Bernie Sanders, the socialist senator from Vermont; Pete Buttigieg, the mayor of South Bend, Indiana; or even Michael Bloomberg, the former New York mayor who spent $1bn on a primary bid that ended with a sole victory: American Samoa.
In an ominous sign, Barack Obama, who had twice chosen Mr Biden as his running mate, did not endorse him until the last minute.
Indeed Mr Biden owed his nomination not to Mr Obama, but another man: Jim Clyburn, an African-American congressman from South Carolina and a Democratic party stalwart, who offered his full-throated and much-coveted endorsement. A sweeping win in the South Carolina Democratic primary propelled Mr Biden to victory on Super Tuesday.
Mr Clyburn’s endorsement of Mr Biden was “probably the single most important moment in the history of this presidential election,” said Whit Ayres, a Republican strategist. “If that hadn’t happened, Bernie Sanders would likely have won the nomination.”
While Mr Clyburn’s support would have been a godsend for any Democratic candidate, it was a miracle drug for Mr Biden, whose campaign had until that moment been on life support. It helped him gain the African-American support that would catapult him to the nomination.
Mr Biden then tried to turn the election campaign into a single-issue referendum on Mr Trump’s handling of the coronavirus — and he was not short of material.
Mr Trump spent the campaign fighting with his own government health officials, who wanted him to take the pandemic more seriously, and even succumbed to Covid-19 himself.
He promised in late February that coronavirus would disappear “like a miracle” and then claimed that the country would be “opened up and raring to go by Easter” after weeks of pandemic lockdowns.
In April he suggested from the White House podium that Americans inject disinfectant as a way to beat the virus, only later insisting that he had been joking.
Upon his return to the White House after being hospitalised with the virus, Mr Trump climbed the steps to the residence’s portico and ripped off his mask, setting the stage for his decision to carry on regardless.
“[The president] took a deep dive into the denialism of Covid as his final argument,” said Julian Zelizer, a professor of presidential history at Princeton University.
As the virus raged, the candidates took diametrically opposed approaches to campaigning.
The president continued to hold jam-packed rallies at which he mocked Mr Biden for wearing a mask — a clip that was played repeatedly by the Democratic campaign after Mr Trump contracted the disease.
Conversely, Mr Biden retreated to his home in Wilmington, Delaware, where he spent the majority of the spring and summer months, prompting Mr Trump to call him a “sleepy Joe” who was too decrepit to leave his basement.
For a candidate such as Mr Biden, with a self-professed tendency to make gaffes, the low-key campaign might have served to mask his weaknesses. He struggled to keep up with the attention and enthusiasm generated by Mr Trump, who closed the election by holding five rallies in a single day.
Jeffrey Engel, director of the Center for Presidential History at Southern Methodist University, said Mr Biden had conducted a modern version of a “19th-century front porch campaign”, when candidates would ask delegations to come to them rather than criss-crossing the country in search of votes.
Despite Mr Biden’s attempts to make the election a referendum on the handling of Covid, it was about much more than that.
In May the death of George Floyd in Minnesota at the hands of a white police officer reignited the debate over race relations in the US, prompting nationwide protests and in some instances violence.
Mr Trump tried to take advantage of the unrest with an uncompromising “law and order” message while Mr Biden took a more nuanced approach, condemning rioters but supporting protesters and their fight for equality.
Then, in September, the liberal Supreme Court justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg died, setting up a scramble by Senate Republicans to push through the nomination of conservative judge Amy Coney Barrett as her replacement before the election.
Ms Barrett’s controversial confirmation would in a sense set the stage for what came next. Late on Tuesday, Mr Trump declared that he would ask the Supreme Court to stop the election count without a winner having been declared.
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November 04, 2020 at 06:00PM
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US election 2020: Biden comes up short after predictions of blowout victory - Financial Times
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