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Obama Chooses Biden as Running Mate
[Quote:]
Senator Barack Obama has chosen Senator Joseph R. Biden Jr. of Delaware to be his running mate, turning to a leading authority on foreign policy and a longtime Washington hand to fill out the Democratic ticket, Mr. Obama announced in text and e-mail messages early Saturday.
[More on Biden on electoral-vote.com:]
Biden has an unusual biography as well as pros and cons. A brief rundown follows. He was born in Scranton, PA, to a working-class Irish Catholic family. They moved to Delaware whe he was 10. His father was a car salesman. He went to college in Delaware and then got a law degree from Syracuse University. Lawyers are drawn to politics like bees are to honey and at 27 was elected to the local county council. At 29 he ran for the Senate and won, despite being constitutionally ineligible. Fortunately, he hit 30 before being inaugurated so they let him him. He has been in the Senate ever since and is now in his sixth term and running for reelection this year.
A few months after his election to the Senate, his wife and baby daughter were killed in a car accident and his two young sons almost killed. He wanted to resign from the Senate to care for his boys but the Democrats convinced him to stay on. He decided to commute an hour and a half every day from his home near Wilmington, DE, to the Senate to maximize his time with them. Thirty-five years later, he is still doing it. In 1977, he married his current wife, Jill. In February 1988 he suffered a brain aneurysm but survived well enough to run for President that year but dropped out after he was caught plagiarizing part of a speech from a British politician, Neil Kinnock.
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