Biden joins crowded filed of Democratic WH hopefuls, takes aim at Trump

Former US Vice-President Joe Biden, who had once called India a “rising, rising economic power”, announced Thursday he would be seeking the Democratic presidential nomination to challenge President Donald Trump in 2020, saying the “soul of this nation” was at stake.

Former US Vice-President Joe Biden, who had once called India a “rising, rising economic power”, announced Thursday he would be seeking the Democratic presidential nomination to challenge President Donald Trump in 2020, saying the “soul of this nation” was at stake.

Former US Vice-President Joe Biden (AP file photo)

Biden joined a crowded and divers field of Democratic rivals as a frontrunner, and in a three-minute video announcement he took direct aim at the president. “We are in the battle for the soul of this nation,” he said. “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.”

The video-announcement made no policy promises, but the former vice-president is expected to present himself as an experienced, stable and unifying alternative to the belligerent, mercurial and divisive Trump. The video had clips from the race-violence triggered by white nationalist in Charlottesville, Virginia in 2017. Referring to Trump’s remarks that there were “fine people on both sides”, Biden said that at that moment “I knew the threat to our nation was unlike any I’d ever seen in my lifetime.”

The president fired back soon after, and started by giving Biden a nickname. “Welcome to the race Sleepy Joe,” he wrote in a tweet. “I only hope you have the intelligence, long in doubt, to wage a successful primary campaign. It will be nasty - you will be dealing with people who truly have some very sick & demented ideas. But if you make it, I will see you at the Starting Gate!”

Biden has to contend first, indeed, with a group of 19 party rivals that has been noted for its diversity: four women, two African Americans, one Asian American, one Indian-American, and, for the first time in a presidential race, one Hindu-American and an openly gay man. He did not make it through primaries that last two times he sought the nomination.

But he will face challenges. At 76, he is among the oldest in the fray, just a year younger than Senator Bernie Sanders. And, it is being said, he is perhaps out of sync with the new crop of young progressives who are changing and re-shaping the Democratic party, such as congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez.

Biden has also faced allegations of inappropriate physical contacts — not sexual — by women. Though he has defended himself saying he considers physical contact essential to his style of politics, he said he has heard the women and will be “much more mindful” now.

And he is gaffe prone. Among his Top 10 is the time he mocked Indian-Americans for their accent. “I’ve had a great relationship. In Delaware (where he lives), the largest growth in population is Indian-Americans moving from India, he had said in 2006, when he last ran for the White House. “You cannot go to a 7-Eleven or a Dunkin’ Donuts unless you have a slight Indian accent.” His campaign had quickly clarified.

But the former vice-president has been bullish on ties with India. During a visit to India in 2013, he said, “India is no longer an economic island -- (it’s a) a rising, rising economic power.”

He had gone on to put a dollar figure on his optimism about India: “In the last 13 years, we’ve increased fivefold our bilateral trade, reaching nearly $100 billion. There’s not a one of you sitting out there that knows there is any logical impediment as to why that could not be fivefold that number.” That target of $500 billion remains elusive, but trade between the two countries is expected to cross $145 billion in 2019, going up by 50% in the five years since that speech.

He had started his remarks then with a reference to a letter he received from an Indian man in 1972, when he was first elected to the US senate. He was “a gentleman named Biden -- Biden, my name -- from Mumbai, asserting that we were related”.

“Seriously,” the vice-president said as the audience had cracked up. “Suggesting that our mutual, great, great, great, something or other worked for the East India Trading Company back in the 1700s and came to Mumbai.”

“And so I was thinking about it,” he added, “if that’s true, I might run here in India for office.”