Biden Comes Out Swinging

F
or several months, Joe Biden publicly toyed with the idea of running for president, fueling a frenzy of speculation. All that conjecture ended last Thursday, when the former vice president announced his decision to run.

Biden has a clear edge over his Democratic competitors (all 20 of them) in terms of name recognition, not to mention experience. But the really interesting part of his announcement wasn’t his actual decision — that was long expected — but how he did it.

“Charlottesville, Virginia.” Those were the first words that Biden spoke in his campaign video announcement, in which he contrasted the city’s noble history as the home of Declaration of Independence author Thomas Jefferson with the city’s more recent, ignoble history as the site of a white supremacist rally that shocked the nation and left one counterprotester dead.

But President Trump’s comment that there were “very fine people on both sides” in Charlottesville was Biden’s real target. “In that moment, I knew that the threat to this nation was unlike any I had seen in my lifetime,” Biden intoned.