Former Vice President Joe Biden announces the presidential candidacy for the White House for 2020: NPR

Updated at 6:20 AM ET

After months of oscillating speculation, followed by a long ramp-up that has resulted in uncomfortable reassessments of his long public career, former Vice President Joe Biden announced that he would show up for the Presidency of the Council in 2020.

Biden made the announcement in a video released on Thursday. He is expected to travel to Pittsburgh for a launch event next week, underlining the latest Democratic candidate's focus on winning back key states in 2016, with President Trump overthrown.

Biden's announcement focuses on a "battle for the soul of this nation", with a dramatic video centered on the demonstration of white supremacy in 2017 in Charlottesville, Virginia, and on the president's response Trump that there were "very good people on both sides" the protester was killed.

"At that time, I knew that the threat to this nation was different from the one I had ever seen in my life," Biden says in the video.

"I think the story of this president will be four years and that everything he embraces is an aberrational moment," added Biden. "But if we give Donald Trump eight years in the White House, he will forever and fundamentally change the character of this nation – who we are – and I can not stand there and watch it."

The former Delaware senator, age 76, immediately becomes one of the leading nominees for the Democratic nomination, four years after his candidacy for the White House after the death of his Beau son. However, he will certainly be confronted with questions about his age, his previous positions in law enforcement and his actions towards women as a result of the #MeToo era. Biden is the 20th candidate to enter the primary Democratic primary.

As Biden softened the ground to launch his campaign, he hit a lot of stones. The potential candidate has recently been threatened by accusations of unwanted touching by several women. Biden had to defend his "touch" approach in a major cultural change. A former Nevada Democratic candidate, Lucy Flores, said in March that the former vice president had grabbed her shoulders from behind, that she had sniffed her hair and that she had then kissed her. Back of his head before a campaign event in 2014. been captured on video or photo as Biden performed official ceremonies and appeared at other events over the years.

Biden would eventually admit that his behavior made others feel uncomfortable. He posted a video message saying, "Social norms are changing, I understand and I have heard what these women are saying, politics has always been about connecting, but I will be more space in the future. "

A few days later, Biden made a joke about the incidents during a speech to a union group. He then told reporters that he was "sorry for not understanding more", he was "not sorry for my intentions" and "not sorry for all that I've ever done ".

Biden has not hidden his presidential aspirations since his departure from power in 2017 and has also not seemed to be discouraged by the controversies of recent weeks. He visited the first primary states, such as Iowa and New Hampshire, and campaigned on behalf of several Democratic candidates during the mid-term of 2018. Part of this trip was due to his book , Promise me, dad: a year of hope, hardship and goals, which reflects the death of Beau Biden in 2015 from a brain cancer at the age of 46 years.

The death of his son would have been the major hurdle for Biden in 2016, which provoked a very public fight to find out if he could put aside his grief for a grueling campaign. In the end, Biden decided that he could not, and in a speech in October 2015 at the White House Rose Garden, accompanied by his wife, Jill, and President Barack Obama, he announced that He would not be a candidate for the presidency.

"While my family and I were working on the grieving process, I've always been repeating what I've said repeatedly to others: that it may very well be that the process, the moment we finish it, close the window, "said Biden. "I concluded that it was closed."

If February, Biden revealed during an interview at the University of Delaware that his family was fully on board and that his wife, Jill, the Hunter and Ashley children, and his grandchildren l? had "prompted" to introduce themselves.

"No matter who runs – it's a very difficult campaign," Biden told the presidential historian Jon Meacham. "The primary will be very difficult, and the general elections against President Trump are unlikely to stop, whether against anyone or against whom he is running."

Biden presented his potential campaign message at such appearances, as well as in a March speech to a large fire brigade.

"We can not be defined – we can not be defined – by race, by religion, by tribe – we are defined by those enduring principles that are in the Constitution," said Biden, who, in America, everyone That's what the next president of the United States needs to understand, and that's what I do not think at all the current president understands. "

It was clear in 2016 and beyond that Biden was failing to be part of political action. After seeing Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton lose to Donald Trump, Biden's criticism of the new president has multiplied. Earlier this year, Biden told a rally in Florida that he would have taken Trump "behind the gym and beat him to death" in high school. Biden later regretted the phrasing, but the president replied that Biden "would not last long" in a fight with him.

This will be Biden's third race as president. His first try came in 1988, ending amid revelations of plagiarism. In 2008, Biden had failed to enforce in the primary, but Obama had chosen him as a candidate for the position of Vice President, bringing international experience that He had acquired the leadership of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, which was lacking for the young senator from Illinois. Their unlikely couple ended up creating a famous friendship and the two men formed good relationships and worked professionally at the White House and after, qualifying each other for "brother".

Biden's tenure in the Senate, which will last four decades, will also be scrutinized. The Washington Post Recently considered his opposition to bus transportation in 1975 as schools struggled for desegregation and he concluded that he suggested that the role of government in the integration should be limited. He advocated for legislation to extend prison sentences for drug-related offenses, which predominantly affect minorities, and which has recently been re-examined as part of the new reform efforts. of criminal justice.

The processing of Biden's confirmation hearings in 1991 for Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas was also re-examined after controversial confirmation hearings last year for Judge Brett Kavanaugh, accused of sexual assault. Anita Hill accused Thomas of sexual harassment, and the manner in which Biden chaired the Senate Judiciary Committee was criticized for the unanswered attacks on Hill and for the fact that witnesses did not call who would have supported his testimony.

All of these concerns among the questions about his conduct towards women – and that Biden would be almost 78 years old on polling day in 2020 and is a white man in a party with younger, more diverse and more progressive presidential candidates – are challenges for Biden's candidacy, even though many anticipated polls show that he is at the top of the ground measuring because he is so well known.

Biden is popular among African-American voters, an important segment of the Democratic primary electorate. But with two well-known black candidates in the race, Senators Kamala Harris and Cory Booker of New Jersey, and his record of criminal conviction, Biden could face serious challenges for this electoral bloc.

Although he brings strength to Rust Belt, states that Trump was able to win, other candidates might offer similar assets, such as Minnesota Senator Amy Klobuchar, and the mayor of South Bend, Ind., Pete Buttigieg. If voters really want someone from a new generation, many candidates, including former Texas representative, Beto O'Rourke, could challenge Mr. Biden.