President Joe Biden has cast early voting for the 2024 general election.
It’s a bittersweet moment for Biden, who decided to end his re-election campaign in July due to growing concerns about his health and concerns from Democrats about his chances of defeating former President Donald Trump. Biden voted Monday at the Delaware State Department of Elections, at an early voting site a short distance from his home outside Wilmington, Delaware, where voters lined up on the street to cast their ballots.
Biden chatted with voters while waiting in line to vote and helped push an elderly woman in a wheelchair who was ahead of him. The President waited in line for about 40 minutes before casting his vote.
He presented his identification to the election worker, who had him sign a form and announced: “Joseph Biden is now voting.”
As the President cast his vote behind a black curtain, some first-time voters were announced and the room erupted in cheers for them.
In all but a few years since 1970, Biden has either been in office or running for office during the election season.
But this year, their hopes are pinned on a new generation of Democrats, including three on the Delaware ballot who are looking to make history.
Vice President Kamala Harris, whom Biden endorsed after leaving office, is vying to become the first Black woman and the first person of South Asian descent to serve as president.
State Senator Sarah McBride is trying to become the first openly transgender member of the U.S. House.
McBride, a longtime friend of the Biden family, worked as an aide in the administration of then-President Barack Obama and worked on the 2006 and 2010 campaigns of the president’s late son Beau Biden for Delaware attorney general. He also worked for former Delaware Governor Jack Markell.
McBride hopes to succeed Democratic Rep. Lisa Blunt Rochester, who is seeking to become the first Black woman from Delaware to serve in the U.S. Senate. He has served as Delaware’s sole representative in the House since 2017.
On Monday, Biden had a Blunt Rochester breakfast. He has known her family for decades, and campaigned with her father, Theodore “Ted” Blunt, who served on the Wilmington City Council for nearly a quarter-century, including as president. Biden formally endorsed Blunt Rochester on Sunday evening, cutting a video for his campaign in which he called her “Delaware through and through.”
Blunt is vying to succeed Rochester Senator Tom Carper, who has held the seat in the strongly Democratic state since 2001. He is retiring.
Early voting in Delaware began on Saturday.
(This story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
