On Thursday, April 25, Joe Biden he is running for the Democratic nomination for US president in 2020. The move came after months of speculation from the media and party insiders, as Biden had seemed to express regret for not running in 2016. In the campaign announcement video, he slammed Trump's Charlottesville response and the administration's coziness with white supremacists and neo-Nazis. Biden is the Democratic old guard who will need to win the hearts of diverse voters as the latest candidate to enter the crowded primary field of 21 presidential hopefuls.

Biden was born in 1942 in Pennsylvania to a middle class family. He attended the University of Delaware and Syracuse University College of Law. He worked as a law clerk, public defender, and county councilor. Then he ran for US Senate in Delaware in 1972 and won. Biden met his current wife Jill in 1975. He served 6 terms in the Senate and chaired the powerful Senate Judiciary and Foreign Relations Committees during his long tenure. He played a crucial part in drafting and passing the 1994 crime bill and Violence Against Women Act. He unsuccessfully ran for president in 191988 and 2008. Finally, Biden served for 8 years as President Barack Obama's vice president.

Biden offers a few vague policy issues on his campaign website. Among those are restoring the middle class and helping workers, improving education, addressing pollution and climate change, reforming the criminal justice system, supporting fair trade, protecting voting rights and creating public campaign financing, and upholding a humane immigration policy. He also wants to defend the Affordable Care Act and strengthen Obamacare's access to healthcare. Biden's vision is based on his old guard values of tolerance, diversity, and freedom. He is running a values-based campaign focused on attacking Trump's multiple flaws.

Biden faces many challenges in his run. First, he is very old at age 76 and would be the oldest president ever. Second, his long political record is less progressive and more moderate. His role in the crime bill and resulting mass incarceration, Iraq and Afghanistan wars, and the Clarence Thomas and Anita Hill hearings will be criticized by the left. Third, Biden has a history of inappropriately touching women and children. But Biden also enjoys many advantages. First, he has broad name recognition and topped recent polls, even against Trump. Second, he has the backing of much of the Democratic establishment, raising $6.3 million in his campaign's first day. Third, he could be a more appealing candidate to centrists, independents, and white voters who feel nostalgia for the Obama era. As the last major candidate to declare a campaign, Biden will be discussed on the news cycle until June's first primary debate.