Biden’s appeal: Is being the ‘anti-Trump’ enough?

Joe Biden doesn’t inspire strong enthusiasm – or hatred. In a year punctuated by a pandemic and economic and social turmoil, he’s positioning himself as a moderate who can set the nation aright.

In the summer of 1999, law student Michael Migliore was working as a legal aide in then-Sen. Joe Biden’s office in Wilmington, Delaware. While at a staff picnic at the Biden home, he ran into the senator himself in the basement.

“Sit down!” Mr. Biden commanded. A lengthy conversation ensued.

“We ended up talking – I’m not kidding – an hour and a half,” says Mr. Migliore, now counsel to the New Castle County Council in Delaware. “We talked about everything under the sun – family, law school, civil rights, legislation he had worked on.”

“Whether you’re royalty or a regular person, he has a knack for really relating to people, which most people don’t have,” Mr. Migliore adds. “He makes you feel special.”

Sen. Joe Biden, Democrat of Delaware, holds his daughter Ashley for a family portrait as Vice President George H.W. Bush reenacts his administering of the oath of office on Capitol Hill in 1985.

Stories like this about Mr. Biden, the Democratic nominee for president, are legion. And if they involve a personal struggle – a loved one lost, a battle with stuttering, as he has had – Mr. Biden is on it. His own stories of loss – of his first wife and baby daughter in a car crash and the death from cancer decades later of his son Beau – have given him a well of empathy and a sense of purpose.