First comes film music, sensitive strings, a bit of piano, and then he speaks: Joe Biden, former vice president of the United States, announced by video message his candidacy for the White House in 2020. He wants to go against Donald Trump - and he wants him beat.
"Eight years of Donald Trump forever change the character of this nation," says Biden in his video. "I can not stand idly by and watch."
Biden's candidacy had been long awaited. But now that he's actually explaining it, the news is electrifying the country and causing lively debate: can this veteran political figure, President Barack Obama's closest companion, actually win next year? Is he right to drive Donald Trump out of the White House? Is he the savior of the Democrats?
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Joe Biden: The challengerA bit of this candidacy looks like out of time. Biden is 76 years old, so if he really gets into the White House, the new president would be 78. Even Trump, the oldest candidate ever elected to office, is four years younger. Ronald Reagan was 69 when he became president - and even that was considered old.
Dusty establishment
The senior Biden meets in the primaries of the Democrats on a field of competitors who are all far younger and fresher than the other senior Bernie Sanders (77) as he himself: Names such as Kamala Harris, Pete Buttigieg, Beto O'Rourke stand for Departure, dynamism, a new beginning, but also for diversity and progressiveness. Biden, on the other hand, embodies the old, somewhat dusty Democratic establishment in Washington: when he was first elected to the US Senate in 1972, some of his competitors were not yet born.
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Biden has already run for president three times and has never made it to the Democratic Party Congress. One time, in 1987, he had to quit early because he had copied parts of a speech at the then British Labor leader Neil Kinnock.
Again and again he caused in the heat of the election campaign also because of too loose slogans about women or black for negative headlines. Special pessimists in the Democrats predict that his loose mouth could now harm him again. "The only person who can beat Joe Biden is Joe Biden," is a popular verdict of many commentators in the hours following the official announcement of his candidacy.
And yet this candidacy certainly has strengths: in most polls, Biden is leading the field of Democratic candidates. His fame helps him. Another plus point is his down-to-earthness, with which he can probably score especially with older voters. And clearly, "Uncle Joe", with his chubby charm in the states of the "rust belt" in the North of the USA, can appeal to people like Donald Trump - white workers, unsettled members of the middle class, conservatives.
Biden himself will try to sell his long political experience as an advantage. This applies in particular to foreign policy, in which, as former Vice-President and Senator, he certainly has the most knowledge of all applicants. Donald Trump beats him here anyway.
Moral counterweight to Trump
After all, what is known so far, but Biden will initially position itself primarily as a moral counterpart to Donald Trump: Even in his application video, he sets here a clear accent. The next election is nothing less than the "fight for the soul of our nation," he says. "It's about who we really are."
Biden expressly denounced Trump's handling of the neo-Nazi march and counter-demonstrations in Charlottesville in the summer of 2017, when the president declared that "decent people" were "on both sides". This has been deeply frightening for him, Biden points out. An attack on the value base of the United States, on the freedom, democracy and equality of people of all skin colors and faiths.
Will this message get caught up with the voters? Maybe: Donald Trump's popularity values have reached a new low, according to Robert Mueller's Russia report, and only 39 percent of Americans are satisfied with his position. The longing for an end to this presidency is obviously great among many voters.
Nonetheless, there is still a long way to go until the election on 3 November 2020, as Joe Biden knows. And the primaries of the Democrats do not start until January. To get off to a good start by then, he must now quickly show his face. On Saturday, a big rally in Philadelphia is planned, on Monday he wants to perform in Pittsburgh, both cities are old strongholds of the Democrats in the state of Pennsylvania, which Hillary Clinton lost in 2016 to Donald Trump. If Biden wants a chance, he has to beat Trump here.
And the candidate needs money: Above all, the other senior, Bernie Sanders, has already collected many millions of small donors who support his candidacy. The same applies to Donald Trump. If Biden wants to keep up, he has to keep up and collect many, many millions of large and small donors. Without a bulging campaign fund, that much is certain, nobody in the US can become president.