“As Democrats assess the dizzying array of 20 candidates, the first question they should ask is whether a nominee could gain a strong majority in the general election and defeat Trump… [Biden] would be far from an ideal president, let alone a Democratic candidate. Maybe in one of those blessed miracles of American democracy that produced our greatest presidents, someone else will emerge who's younger, smarter, more representative of a diverse electorate. But right now, Biden looks most like the person who could beat Trump. And that’s Job One.”
David Ignatius, Washington Post

“A lot of the attacks on Biden are, from an electoral angle, silly. Going after Biden for his lack of liberal wokeness, for example, seems destined to fail, given that the polling shows that Democrats want the party to move in a more moderate direction. Biden's age is more likely to derail his candidacy… The fact that Biden is called ‘Sleepy Joe’ by Trump and is known to make gaffes may open the age question more than polling indicates right now.”
Harry Enten, CNN

Meanwhile, critics assert that “while most Democrats like Barack Obama personally, the party has lurched left since he left office, and many of its activists now take a dim view of policies that Democrats once deemed mainstream. Thus, if Biden had entered the presidential race with a standard biographical video describing his many accomplishments in public life… he would have immediately prompted a debate about all the positions he once took—on crime, financial deregulation, Anita Hill, and the Iraq War—that Democrats now scorn…

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“Biden evades that problem in his announcement video, but at a cost. He bathes the past in a warm glow without defending it substantively. And in so doing, he offers a deeply unconvincing historical narrative in which Trump lands upon the American political scene from outer space.”
Peter Beinart, The Atlantic

“There’s plenty of reasonable debate over whether Democratic candidates should focus on Trump in mounting their arguments, or if they should focus on what they want to do for voters… I suspect this is a bit of a false choice, as what we need is a little bit of both. But if we’re going to talk about Donald Trump, I think we need to acknowledge that he wasn’t created in a vacuum. Our systemic racism and sexism, coupled with our economic insecurities, built a world in which Trump could come to power. Biden’s announcement seems premised on the idea that we need to revert to the world we had before Trump, rather than dramatically rethink the world that produced him.”
Dara Kass, Slate

Minority view: “Biden's presidential announcement video… did something urgently needed in the 2020 race: put President Donald Trump's history of hate front and center. By doing so, Biden acknowledged the pain -- the real pain -- that so many marginalized communities have felt since [2015]… We deeply feel the impact of Trump's attacks. And we want to know that the 2020 Democratic candidates understand that and are willing to respond accordingly.”
Dean Obeidallah, CNN