F
or several months, Joe Biden publicly toyed with the idea of running for president, fueling a frenzy of speculation. All that conjecture ended last Thursday, when the former vice president announced his decision to run.

Biden has a clear edge over his Democratic competitors (all 20 of them) in terms of name recognition, not to mention experience. But the really interesting part of his announcement wasn’t his actual decision — that was long expected — but how he did it.

“Charlottesville, Virginia.” Those were the first words that Biden spoke in his campaign video announcement, in which he contrasted the city’s noble history as the home of Declaration of Independence author Thomas Jefferson with the city’s more recent, ignoble history as the site of a white supremacist rally that shocked the nation and left one counterprotester dead.

But President Trump’s comment that there were “very fine people on both sides” in Charlottesville was Biden’s real target. “In that moment, I knew that the threat to this nation was unlike any I had seen in my lifetime,” Biden intoned.

Biden also raised the specter of anti-Semitism, warning that the Nazism of the 1930s is alive and well in the United States of America. That focus on anti-Jewish hate distinguishes him from extremists in his own party, who have brandished openly anti-Semitic tropes.

Surprisingly, Trump swallowed Biden’s bait, quickly insisting that his response to Charlottesville had been appropriate. “That question was answered perfectly,” he told reporters outside the White House. “I was talking about people that went because they felt very strongly about the monument of Robert E. Lee, a great general. People were there protesting the taking down of the monument of Robert E. Lee. Everybody knows that.”

As it happens, Biden’s message that the country is seriously off track appeared a mere 48 hours before the shooting at a Chabad shul in Poway, near San Diego. It seems that whether we like it or not, anti-Semitism is going to figure prominently in this election campaign. Trump had little to worry about until now; aside from Bernie Sanders, there had been no heavyweights in the ring. Biden’s entry has changed that.

(Originally featured in Mishpacha, Issue 758)