Biden became Vice President on January 20, 2009, and is the first person from Delaware and first Roman Catholic to be Vice President. When Biden became Vice President, he said he would do things differently from Dick Cheney, who had been Vice President before him. Biden has said that his vice-presidency will not be like any other.
Biden's main role was as an advisor to Obama, mostly on issues of foreign policy and the economy. Obama has asked for Biden's input on most of his major decisions, such as who to put in his Cabinet and how to fight the War in Afghanistan. Obama has put him in charge of groups to deal with the problems of the working class, as well as to watch the money in his stimulus bill. Biden had also traveled to the Middle East several times on behalf of Obama and the U.S. while Vice President. In 2011, Biden lead talks on the budget and the debt. On November 6, 2012, Biden was re-elected for a second term as Vice President along with President Barack Obama.
After winning the election, Biden served the Vice Presidency until January 20, 2017.
In August 2015, Biden said that he was looking for a possible chance of running for President again in the 2016 U.S. election. Biden formed a PAC for his possible run. On October 21, speaking from a podium in the Rose Garden with his wife and President Obama by his side, Biden announced his decision not to enter the race for the Democratic nomination for the presidency for the 2016 election.
During a tour of the U.S. Senate with reporters before leaving office on December 5, 2016, Biden said that a presidential bid was possible in the 2020 presidential election, after leaving office as Vice President. While on "The Late Show with Stephen Colbert" on December 7, he stated "never say never" about running for President in 2020, while also admitting he did not see a scenario in which he would run for office again. On January 13, 2017, exactly one week before Donald Trump took office. he said he would not run. However, four days later, on January 17, he took the statement back, saying "I'll run if I can walk."
Biden was mentioned by many news outlets as a potential candidate for the 2020 Democratic nomination. In March 2019, he said he may run.
He formally launched his campaign on April 25, 2019.
In April 2020, Biden became the only candidate in the primary making him the presumptive nominee for the nomination. At first, he lost the first three primary contests to Senator Bernie Sanders. After winning the South Carolina primary, he gained traction and won most of the Super Tuesday races.
Biden promised when elected he would protect "Roe v. Wade" decision, create a public option for health insurance, decriminalization of recreational cannabis, pass the Equality Act, create free community college, and a $1.7 trillion climate plan supporting the Green New Deal. He supports regulation instead of a complete ban on fracking.
In early 2020, Biden promised he would pick a woman as his running mate. He also promised that his first Supreme Court appointment would be a black woman. In August 2020, he picked California U.S. Senator Kamala Harris as his running mate.
On November 3, 2020, FiveThirtyEight's statistical model projected that Biden had a 89% chance to defeat Donald Trump. He defeated Trump in the general election after officially being projected as the winner on November 7, 2020. With more than 81 million votes, Biden received the most votes ever cast for a candidate in a U.S. presidential election.
Biden was elected the 46th President of the United States in November 2020, defeating the incumbent Donald Trump, the first sitting president to lose re-election since George H. W. Bush in 1992.
He became the second non-incumbent vice president to be elected president, and the first Democrat to do so. He is also expected to become the oldest president at the time of inauguration, as well as the first president from Delaware.
At first, General Services Administrator Emily W. Murphy did not want to acknowledge Biden as the winner of the 2020 election. On November 23, however, she formally recognized Biden as the apparent winner of the 2020 election and authorized the start of a transition process to the Biden administration.
In late December 2020, Biden received his first dose of the Pfizer–BioNTech COVID-19 vaccine in Delaware. He returned for his second dose in early January 2021.
Biden was inaugurated shortly before noon on January 20, 2021 as the 46th president of the United States. At 78, he is the oldest person to become president. He is the second Catholic president (after John F. Kennedy) and the first president whose home state is Delaware.
In his first two days as president, Biden signed 17 executive orders, more than most recent presidents did in their first 100 days. Biden signed more executive orders than any other president since Franklin D. Roosevelt had in their first month in office. His first actions were rejoining the Paris Climate Agreement, ending the state of national emergency at the border with Mexico, rejoining the World Health Organization, a 100-day mandatory face mask requirements on federal property and acts to stop hunger in the United States.
On February 4, 2021, he announced that the United States will stop giving weapons to Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates for use in the Yemeni Civil War.
On March 11, 2021, the first anniversary of COVID-19 being declared a global pandemic by the World Health Organization, Biden signed into law the American Rescue Plan Act of 2021, a $1.9 trillion economic stimulus relief package. The package included direct payments to most Americans, an extension of increased unemployment benefits, funds for vaccine distribution and school reopenings, support for small businesses and state and local governments, and expansions of health insurance subsidies and the child tax credit. Biden tried to raise the minimum wage to $15 an hour, but removed it from the stimulus package after criticism from both parties.
In March 2021, when there was an increase in migrants coming to the United States from Mexico, Biden told migrants: "Don't come over." He said that the U.S. was arranging a plan for migrants to "apply for asylum in place", without leaving their original locations. In the meantime, migrant adults "are being sent back", Biden said, in reference to the continuation of the Trump administration's Title 42 policy for quick deportations. Biden earlier announced that his administration would not deport unaccompanied migrant children and told the Federal Emergency Management Agency to help take care of children separated at the border.
On March 25, 2021, Biden announced that he would run for re-election in the 2024 election.
On April 28, 2021, Biden addressed the United States Congress in his State of the Union Address. Presiding over this joint session was the House Speaker, Nancy Pelosi, and the Vice President of the United States, Kamala Harris as President of the Senate ― the first time two women preside over an address to Congress.
There have been many photographs of Biden hugging, kissing, and touching women and/or children in what commentators said to be inappropriate. Biden has said that the behavior had got him in trouble in the past.
In March 2019, former Nevada assemblywoman Lucy Flores said that Biden kissed her without consent at a 2014 campaign rally in Las Vegas. Flores wrote that Biden walked up behind her, put his hands on her shoulders, smelled her hair, and kissed the back of her head. In an interview with "HuffPost", Flores stated she believed Biden's behavior should force him not to run in 2020. By early April 2019, a total of seven women had made such allegations regarding Biden.