PITTSBURGH — In September 1987, Jill Biden stood stoically beside her husband Joe at a press conference in Manchester, New Hampshire, where the then-senator from Delaware was being pressed by dozens of print and television reporters about his future after he was caught stealing other politicians’ words without giving them credit, embellishing his academic record, and for having plagiarized material in an article while a student at Syracuse Law School 20 years earlier.

John Ellement of the Boston Globe set the scene that day after Biden withdrew from the race for the 1988 Democratic presidential nomination, even as his defiant supporters were wearing campaign white buttons that read “92” in an effort to project that Biden would be back four years later.