When asked in a later interview to define what “lots of luck in your senior year” meant to him, Mr. Jones said that the line reminded him of a line from a Toni Morrison novel in which one character spoke dismissively to another.
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Mr. Biden has always communicated through bits of personal folklore. Sometimes, he veers into fiction — like claiming his home had burned down when it hadn’t. Or he embellishes his stories, like when he talked about confronting a teenage adversary named Corn Pop. (That conflict is rooted in truth, but with exaggerated details.)
Growing up, Mr. Biden did have a football coach at Archmere Academy. When John Walsh was inducted into the Delaware Sports Hall of Fame in 2012, Mr. Biden attended and delivered remarks: “He urged us to play the game the same way you lived your life, with passion and integrity,” Mr. Biden said.
No remarks on “senior year,” though.
Mr. Biden usually deploys the phrase as a dismissive insult to less-experienced lawmakers who have logged fewer years in politics and have promised to tackle Democratic legislation.
During one of Mr. Biden’s last interviews as vice president, the journalist Andrea Mitchell asked him about the promise of Donald J. Trump, the president-elect, to repeal the Affordable Care Act and replace it within the span of one day.
“Remember the expression you’d have when you’d pass around your yearbook to be signed, and someone would say, ‘Lots of luck in your senior year?’” an amused Mr. Biden asked. “Lots of luck in your senior year, Mr. Trump.”
Mr. Trump chipped away at the law’s provisions but was not successful in repealing it.
Last November, when Mr. Biden was asked during a news conference to respond to Republican lawmakers planning to investigate his son, Hunter, and his family’s business interests, he again revisited the salty aside.
Katie Rogers
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