By Michael Kruse of Politico –
There is no person in American politics today whose life has been so shaped by loss and grief. The long arc of Biden’s career is all but bracketed by tragedy. In 1972, his wife and baby daughter were killed in a car accident; in 2015, one of his two sons who had survived the crash died of a rare strain of brain cancer.
These wretched tentpoles are not only tragedies the 76-year-old Biden has had to endure. They influenced major decisions he made about his political career—first, his priorities in the Senate; later, his decision to opt out of the presidential election of 2016.
And they defined him as a person as well.
