"The X Factor": Will Joe Biden Reshape the Race?

Joe Biden officially announced that he is running for the nation's top job on Thursday. As candidate number 20, he is entering a historically crowded race. Does he have what it takes to stand out from the pack? 

We check in with two campaign reporters, Juana Summers from The Associated Press, and Annie Linskey from The Washington Post, who tell us about what voters seem to be looking for when trying to choose between the candidates. 

For our Biden digest, we turn to Mike Memoli, of NBC News, who has been following Biden's career on the national stage for over a decade. He explains what he thinks we can expect from Biden’s third attempt to reach the highest office. Borys Krawczeniuk, of the Scranton Times-Tribune, gives us the view from Biden's hometown. And Aimee Allison, the founder of the political group She the People, says he has some serious obstacles to overcome if he wants to do well with black women voters. 

Plus, Bloomberg's Joshua Green has been out on the campaign trail trying to gauge where voters stand on the issue of impeachment. His verdict? They are pretty ambivalent. 

Amy's Final Take:

After the  2016 election, the  media was criticized for spending too much time in D.C. absorbed in our Twitter bubbles. Voters were telling us the story of the election, but we weren’t listening to it.

Three years later, the Washington, D.C. and Twitter echo chambers are obsessed with talk of "impeachment" and "Russia" yet that’s not what voters or presidential candidates are talking about out in the states.  

My sense, from listening to voters and to the reporters who are on the ground covering them, is that Democratic voters are more pragmatic than prescriptive. The grassroots demand for Congress to start impeachment just doesn't seem to be there. Now, should Trump win re-election, I'd expect that pragmatism to give way to all out panic and push-back.

That may change, but for now, we should take the lessons of 2016 to heart and stop trying to make the narrative fit neatly into a box we have already pre-built. The race for 2020 has a LONG way to go. The best way to understand where it’s headed is to watch it unfold at its own pace, not the one being set by cable TV.