Joe Biden, the Ultimate D.C. Veteran, Has Never Seen a Campaign Like This

In October 1984, Senator Joseph R. Biden Jr. of Delaware was invited to address a conservative Baptist church near Wilmington as he campaigned for a third term.

Mr. Biden, hardly the favorite of social conservatives, was in hostile political territory. But as the incumbent, he was given the first speaking slot — and he used it to hold court uninterrupted for nearly an hour. Mr. Biden’s Republican opponent barely got to introduce himself before time was up for the event, while the dozens of other candidates there for the forum never got a word in.

The episode, from “Only in Delaware,” a political history of Delaware by Celia Cohen, a longtime Wilmington journalist, illustrates just how easily Mr. Biden was able to sweep challengers to the side — not just in that race, but throughout his Senate career. Incumbency gave him a staggering advantage.

In 30 years, Mr. Biden never encountered a serious threat to his office. His Republican opponents were underfunded, little-known, inexperienced or some combination of the three. None of them took more than 41 percent of the vote against him.

His re-election fight against former President Donald J. Trump — his 13th bid for federal office, all told — is shaping up to be the opposite of those long-ago Senate campaigns: travel-intensive, nasty and close. A rival is, for the first time with him atop the ticket, forcing him to make a compelling case for his return.

Before his 2020 presidential campaign, which in the general election was light on in-person events because of the coronavirus pandemic, Mr. Biden had never had a harshly negative advertisement about his record in office or his character broadcast against him on television, according to the archive of congressional television and