Biden declares his candidacy for the 2020 US Presidential election
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Former American Vice President Joe Biden on Thursday declared his candidacy for the 2020 US Presidential election.
Biden is the last big name to announce a bid for the presidency for the Democratic Party.
Biden announced his bid in a video released on social media.
He is expected to hold a fundraiser Thursday evening in Philadelphia and hold his first formal campaign event in Pittsburgh on Monday.
In his appeal to voters, Biden recounted the president’s response to the violent white supremacist protests in Charlottesville, Virginia two years ago.
“We are in the battle for the soul of this nation,” he said in the nearly 4-minute long video. “If we give Donald Trump eight years in the White House he will forever and fundamentally alter the character of this nation. And I cannot stand by and watch that happen.”
Biden said he’s running for president because everything about American democracy is “at stake” under a Trump presidency. “We have to remember who we are, this is America,” he added in a final appeal to supporters.
The 76-year-old lifelong politician is a front-runner in the crowded Democratic contest as the party fights to determine who’s best positioned to defeat President Donald Trump next year.
For weeks, polls have shown the 76-year-old Democrat holding steady as the 2020 favorite of more than a quarter of his party’s voters.
According to a Monmouth University poll of Democrats nationwide, released Tuesday, Biden leads the rest of the party’s field, with 27% of Democrats and Democratic-leaning voters saying they would support him for the Democratic nomination. In the same poll a month ago, Biden had support from 28% of respondents, and in January from 29%.
