Fish, you forgot to mention why he commuted from Delaware to Washington.
When he was a young father of three his wife and infant daughter died in a car crash. His two young sons were seriously injured--some doctors told him they would never fully recover. (Thankfully, they did.)
He wanted to resign from the Senate but supporters urged him to stay. He commuted three hours a day when the Senate was in session so that he could spend as much time with them as possible.
He later remarried and had another daughter.
I don't think that Biden's Catholicism will affect Catholic voters one way or the other, because I think Catholic voters make choices based on issues (singular or plural, take your pick) rather than a candidate's religion.
Are Catholics more outraged and offended when a Catholic is pro-choice than when a Methodist is pro-choice? I'm not outraged and offended at all when a Methodist is pro-choice, because their Church does not prohibit abortion (and in the area of social justice, the Methodist Church puts almost every other church in my city, or perhaps even all of them combined, to shame.)
I do not think it is a scandal if a candidate follows the tenets of his/her Church completely, even if they disagree from the tenets of my church. That was one thing I admired and respected about Hillary Clinton. Her positions fit Methodist policy to a "T." There isn't a single Catholic candidate I can think of who could brag about that. Hillary was a better Methodist than any Catholic politician is a Catholic.
Methodist position on abortion:
Our belief in the sanctity of unborn human life makes us reluctant to approve abortion. But we are equally bound to respect the sacredness of the life and well-being of the mother, for whom devastating damage may result from an unacceptable pregnancy. In continuity with past Christian teaching, we recognize tragic conflicts of life with life that may justify abortion, and in such cases we support the legal option of abortion under proper medical procedures. We cannot affirm abortion as an acceptable means of birth control, and we unconditionally reject it as a means of gender selection.
When a Catholic is pro-choice, I think (s)he should fight within his/her party for greater freedom to follow his/her conscience. Biden apparently started out with only a 36% approval rating from NARAL when he was a young Senator, but it edged up to 99% (although he is not quite as liberal as some, and has sided with Republicans on some abortion bills.)
And during this time, Biden was being reelected again and again and again in a highly Democratic state. Biden had the power and the overwhelming majority that I think he could have bucked the party platform, but he didn't (probably because he had national ambitions in the back of his mind.)
And so yes, I do believe he could have fought to follow his conscience on abortion a little bit more than he did, and I fault him for that. If a legislator with 36 years of longevity, the leader of powerful committees, etc. stood up to the Democratic Party, legislators with not quite as much clout would have felt empowered to do the same.
