Joe Biden served as president of the United States from 2021 to 2025, vice president from 2009 to 2017, and in the United States Senate from 1973 until 2009. A member of the Democratic Party, he made his second presidential run in 2008, later being announced as Democratic presidential nominee Barack Obama's running mate in 2008. He was elected vice president in 2008 and re-elected in 2012. In April 2019, Biden announced his 2020 presidential campaign. He became the presumptive Democratic nominee in April 2020,Steve Peoples, Biden vs. Trump: General election battle is now set, Associated Press (April 8, 2020). was formally nominated by the Democratic Party in August 2020,Joe Biden Accepts Presidential Nomination: Full Transcript, New York Times (August 20, 2020). and defeated Republican incumbent Donald Trump in the November 2020 election.Annie Linskey & Philip Rucker, Joe Biden triumphs over Trump, says it is 'a time to heal' even as Trump does not concede, Washington Post (November 7, 2020).
Over his career, Biden has generally been regarded as belonging to the mainstream of the Democratic Party.John Nichols, Joe Biden and Cory Booker Should Debate One Another, The Nation (June 20, 2019).Matthew J. Belvedere, Biden suggests Ocasio-Cortez's far-left politics won't play in a general election against Trump, CNBC (July 5, 2019). Biden has been described as center to center-left,Giovanni Russonello, On Politics: Biden's Big Challenge, New York Times (April 9, 2020). and has described himself as the latter.Transcript: Former Vice President Joe Biden is Interviewed about His Platform, CNN, New Day (July 5, 2019). Figures farther to the left such as Bernie Sanders have criticized Biden for not embracing Medicare for All or the Green New Deal. Biden's policies emphasize the needs of middle-class and working-class Americans,Bill Barrow & Michael Ribinkam, Biden: Trump has 'no idea' about working-class struggles, Associated Press (October 23, 2019). and have drawn political support from those groups.Katie Glueck & Jonathan Martin, Why Joe Biden Resonates With Blue-Collar Voters, New York Times (November 19, 2019). Biden has supported campaign finance reform including the Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act and overturning Citizens United; the 1994 Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act; the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009; student tax credits; carbon emissions cap and trade; the increased infrastructure spending proposed by the Obama administration; mass transit; renewable energy subsidies; student loan forgiveness; and reversals of Republican tax cuts for the wealthy and corporations. He supports building upon the Affordable Care Act through a public health insurance option instead of a single-payer system. He supports decriminalizing cannabis at the federal level and the right for states to legalize it. Biden has been publicly in favor of same-sex marriage since 2012 when he became the highest-ranking U.S. official to voice support for same-sex marriage, preempting Obama on the subject. He also supports the Roe v. Wade decision and since 2019 has been in favor of repealing the Hyde Amendment.
Social issues Abortion Roe v. Wade In a 2019 article about Biden's record on abortion, his press secretary Jamal Brown said that when Biden arrived in the Senate in 1973 he thought Roe v. Wade was wrongly decided, but now "firmly believes that Roe v. Wade is the law of the land and should not be overturned". In 1981, he voted for a failed constitutional amendment allowing states to overturn Roe v. Wade. In 1982, he voted against the same failed constitutional amendment allowing states to overturn Roe, and in 2006, he stated in an interview that "I do not view abortion as a choice and a right. I think it's always a tragedy[.]" He now says he would consider codifying the Roe precedent into federal law in case the United States Supreme Court overturns the ruling. He pledged that he would appoint United States Supreme Court justices who shared his beliefs in upholding Roe.
Federal abortion funding From 1976 to June 5, 2019, Biden supported the Hyde Amendment. On June 6, 2019, Biden reversed his support and now supports repealing the Hyde Amendment. In 1981, he voted to end federal funding for abortion for victims of rape and incest. Biden previously supported the Mexico City policy, but now supports repealing it.
Partial Birth Abortion Despite voting for the Partial-Birth Abortion Ban Act of 2003, he opposed the 2007 United States Supreme Court ruling in Gonzales v. Carhart which upheld the act. He later clarified that he agreed with the decision but not the court's reasoning.
Busing and affirmative action In the mid-1970s, Biden was one of the Senate's leading opponents of race-integration busing. His Delaware constituents strongly opposed it, and such opposition nationwide later led his party to mostly abandon school integration policies.
In his first Senate campaign, Biden expressed support for busing to remedy de jure segregation, as in the South, but opposed its use to remedy de facto segregation arising from racial patterns of neighborhood residency, as in Delaware; he opposed a proposed constitutional amendment banning busing entirely. In May 1974, Biden voted to table a proposal containing anti-busing and anti-desegregation clauses but later voted for a modified version containing a qualification that it was not intended to weaken the judiciary's power to enforce the 5th Amendment and 14th Amendment.
Later, Biden was heckled at a meeting of Delaware anti-busing parents over his opposing vote on a Senate bill that would have created criteria for busing mandates that restricted their use to only certain situations, such as to remedy de jure and not de facto segregation, and "that would have permitted jurisdictions facing [busing] to return to court and possibly have their busing mandate vacated" if the mandate didn't meet those criteria. Biden believed it would be better for the courts, instead of a law, to define such criteria for busing mandates. Despite this, the prospect of a busing plan in Wilmington, along with his opposition to busing requirements outside of de jure segregated areas, led Biden to align himself with anti-busing senators. In 1975, he supported a proposal that would have prevented the Department of Health, Education, and Welfare from cutting federal funds to districts that refused to integrate; he said busing was a "bankrupt idea [violating] the cardinal rule of common sense" and that his opposition would make it easier for other liberals to follow suit.Current Biography Yearbook 1987, p. 44. At the same time he supported initiatives on housing, job opportunities, and voting rights.
In 1977, Biden co-sponsored an amendment to a spending bill that closed loopholes in a measure forbidding the use of federal funds for transporting students beyond the school closest to them. Around that time, he made the remark that if busing integration was done too disorderly and without forethought, his children might grow up in a "racial jungle with tensions having built so high that it is going to explode at some point". The measure was passed along with the bill, which President Jimmy Carter signed into law in 1978.
Biden has supported affirmative action policies.
Capital punishment Since June 20, 2019, Biden opposes capital punishment. Biden supports legislation to eliminate capital punishment at the federal level and incentivize states to abolish capital punishment. He supports individuals on death row instead serving life sentences without probation or parole. Prior to June 20, 2019, he had supported capital punishment. He originally wrote the Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act of 1994. The Act included Title VI, the Federal Death Penalty Act, creating 60 new death penalty offenses under 41 federal capital statutes, for crimes related to acts of terrorism, murder of a federal law enforcement officer, civil rights-related murders, drive-by shootings resulting in death, the use of weapons of mass destruction resulting in death, and carjackings resulting in death. However, he voted against limiting appeals in capital cases and also opposed rejecting racial statistics in death penalty appeals.
On December 23, 2024, Biden commuted the sentences of 37 of the 40 individuals on federal death row to life imprisonment without the possibility of parole. The exceptions are Dylann Roof, Robert Gregory Bowers, and Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, who received death sentences for terrorism or hate-motivated mass murder-related crimes, as well as all four prisoners on US Military death row
Crime
Biden helped author the 1994 Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act, which deployed and trained more police officers, increased prison sentences, and built more prisons. The bill led to a decrease in crime rates while also introducing the Violence Against Women Act. Part of the bill was an assault weapon ban and additional money was redirected towards crime prevention programs. Some critics say that the law had the unintended by-effect of creating a financial incentive for jailing people and keeping them there for longer periods of time; this had a disproportionate impact on minorities.
In the aftermath of the murder of George Floyd, a slogan of "defund the police" arose, which some interpreted to mean the abolition of police departments. Biden stated in a June 2020 opinion piece, "While I do not believe federal dollars should go to police departments violating people's rights or turning to violence as the first resort, I do not support defunding police." President Donald Trump and his allies have claimed that Biden supports "defunding police"; the Trump campaign spent at least $20 million in July 2020 on campaign ads promoting the falsehood. As a senator, Biden had long forged deep relationships with police groups and was a chief proponent of a Police Officer's Bill of Rights measure which was supported by police unions but opposed by police chiefs. As a 2020 presidential candidate, Biden faced criticism from some on the left for his proposal to double federal spending for community policing programs, to $300 million. He called for racial justice while speaking at George Floyd's funeral service. In September 2020, he condemned the institutional racism in the United States and police violence against African American communities.
Drugs Biden earned a reputation for being a "drug warrior", leading efforts in the war on drugs. During the 1980s crack epidemic when both Democrats and Republicans were "tough on crime", Biden was the head of the Senate Judiciary Committee that passed numerous punitive measures against drug offenders. In 1986, Biden sponsored and co-wrote the Anti-Drug Abuse Act which caused a large disparity between the sentencing of crack cocaine and powder cocaine users. Black drug users were more likely than whites to use crack and hence were incarcerated in larger numbers. He later acknowledged the negative consequences of the legislation and in 2010 supported the Fair Sentencing Act. The bill eliminated the five-year mandatory minimum prison term for first-time possession of crack cocaine, and aimed to reduce the disparity in sentencing between crack and powder cocaine offenses.