Joe Biden Joins 2020 Democratic Presidential Race

Former Vice President Joe Biden said he would seek the Democratic presidential nomination in 2020, launching a third bid for the White House as a blue-collar stalwart in a party hungry to defeat President Trump.

Mr. Biden made his long-awaited announcement Thursday in an online video posted nearly 32 years after he began his first presidential campaign in June 1987.

Mr. Biden announced his candidacy with a three-and-a-half minute online video posted on his social-media accounts. “We are in the battle for the soul of this nation,” Mr. Biden says in the video, pointing to Mr. Trump’s response to events in Charlottesville, Va., the site of a deadly white nationalist rally in 2017. “If we give Donald Trump eight years in the White House, he will forever and fundamentally alter the character of this nation, who we are, and I cannot stand by and watch that happen.”

He enters a large, diverse primary campaign as an experienced centrist with a reservoir of goodwill among Democrats after eight years as President Obama’s vice president. Early polls have shown him as a leading contender for the nomination, helped by his broad name recognition.

Mr. Biden arrives as a leading contender but will face a number of hurdles at the start of his campaign. His Democratic rivals have had a head start on fundraising for several months. His centrist politics may not sit well with some of the party’s liberal activists in the early voting states of Iowa and New Hampshire, and he will need to defend past policy stances now out of date among Democrats. In recent weeks he faced criticism from women who said his tendency to touch people made them uncomfortable; Mr. Biden didn’t apologize but said he would be more mindful. If elected, Mr. Biden would be the oldest president to enter the White House.