AUSTIN, Texas — In a three-and-a-half-minute long video, former U.S. Vice President Joe Biden comes out swinging, announcing he’s running for president.
Biden’s video is filled with imagery and chants from the 2017 white supremacist rally in Charlottesville that left a woman dead. And in it, he recalls President Donald Trump's response.
"He said there were quote, 'Some very fine people on both sides.' Very fine people on both sides? With those words, the President of the United States assigned a moral equivalence between those spreading hate and those with the courage to stand against it," Biden says in the video.
Biden goes on to say he knew the threat to America was unlike any other he’d ever seen.
"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."
Now perhaps the worst kept secret of the 2020 election is out: Biden is in.
"It's a very crowded field, but undeniably, Joe Biden is the most well-known of the people in field and that's given him a lot of advantages in the early polling that's been done of Democratic voters," said Jim Henson Ph.D., Director of the Texas Politics Project at the University of Texas at Austin.
A Quinnipiac University Poll from eight weeks ago found Biden and President Trump are virtually tied among likely Texas voters at 46 and 47 percent, respectfully.
But that's also the case for former El Paso Congressman and presidential candidate Beto O'Rourke.
The other candidate from Texas, former San Antonio Mayor Julian Castro, got 41% of the vote when pitted against the president.
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But Henson said Biden is not only well-known, but he also has experience and a proven track record – all of which could be bad for the competition from Texas.
"Neither of the other two Texas candidates – in particular, frankly, Julian Castro – have this locked down. I mean, I think what you wind up seeing in Texas should, you know, these players all stay in the race is that Biden and Beto O'Rourke become kind of the top two contenders,” Henson said.
But it's early. The pool of candidates is deep. And in politics, things are always changing.
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