Keith Meyers / New York Times-REDUX-REA
storyAt age 77, Joe Biden, former vice president of Barack Obama, is fighting for the White House. The last chance for the one who had to give up the dream of constituting a political dynasty.
Autumn slides towards winter. An icy wind sweeps the dead leaves in the streets of Concord, capital of New Hampshire. The squalls sprinkled with fine snow the small assembly gathered in front of the golden dome of the capitol of this state of New England. Climb on a platform, stoic, Joe Biden reassures everyone, it will be short. Honor to be a candidate for the Democratic nomination for the presidential election of 2020, gratitude for the support, tribute to his wife, Jill Biden, present a few meters, applause.
On November 8, former Vice President Barack Obama visited the New Hampshire Secretary's Office a few moments earlier. Preceded by a friendly crush, it initialed the registration form for the Democratic primaries to be held in that state – the second to speak after Iowa – on February 11. A formality to which should lend all candidates for the inauguration for the presidential 2020, who take the opportunity to rally their troops.
Because the countdown is already well launched. The fifth debate between the ten contestants who got enough voting intentions in the polls and a sufficient number of donors was set for Wednesday, November 20th, his 77th birthday. Entered the campaign in April, Joe Biden saw his large lead gradually crumble, gnawed by the push of pretenders more left or younger. Because the autumn that is running is also his.
As if that were not enough, the impeachment procedure of Donald Trump was added to the interrogations that his candidacy accumulates like the net of a trawler. Biden's name appears three times in a controversial telephone conversation between the US president and his Ukrainian counterpart Volodymyr Zelensky. During this exchange on July 25, 2019, Donald Trump invited his interlocutor, in US support, to open an investigation into the son of his rival Democrat, Hunter Biden, present on the board of directors of a Ukrainian gas company. . Supposedly to find something to slow down his father's chances in the election of 2020.
What darken the ultimate ambition of the "good guy Joe", native of Scranton, Pennsylvania, son of a car salesman, of Irish descent, Catholic, champion of blue-collar workers. What also dirty the name of Biden, that Joe dreamed to see becoming that of a dynasty of Washington. A dream on which he had already drawn a painful trait in 2015, bringing to the ground his son Beau, victim of a tumor, this elder on whom he based all his hopes.