Biden has been in the public eye since the 1970s, and unlike Hillary Clinton, who claimed the public never really knew her, voters feel like they know Biden pretty darn well. Many voters don’t remember anything before his vice presidency, his demonstrably warm relationship with President Barack Obama, his remarkable dignity after the death of his beloved son Beau, and his emotional goodbye to the late senator John McCain. He has established a level of emotional intimacy with voters that few politicians attain. He’s the chatty next-door neighbor, the avuncular relative and the co-worker who remembers everyone’s birthday.....

They are also unlikely to decide he’s not progressive enough. Being vice president to the most progressive president we’ve had (including his role in seemingly pushing Obama forward on gay marriage) has its advantages. Moreover, the media periodically lapses into the delusion that Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) and Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) are representative of the entire party.

The recent Monmouth poll of Iowa voters is instructive: Biden not only leads, but has a 78 percent favorability rating and support from the kind of Democrats who show up in primaries — moderate, older voters. Biden has support from 44 percent of seniors and 35 percent of self-described moderate and conservative Democrats. Among lower income/working-class voters whom Democrats have been desperate to attract, he gets 38 percent. Those kind of voters — not self-identified socialists, not Bernie activists on social media — are numerous and dependable voters. And they’re not exactly the kind to punish him for hugging people in distress.

The most important hurdle for Biden and for his competitors will be convincing voters he can beat President Trump. Right now, Biden has a big advantage. “While issue positions are important to Iowa Democrats, the overwhelming majority (64%) prefer to have a nominee who would be strong against Trump even if they disagree with that candidate on most issues,” the pollsters found. “If they were forced to choose, just 24% say they would favor a candidate who they are aligned with on the issues even if that person would have a hard time beating Trump. Biden garners more support among voters who prioritize beating Trump (33%) than he does among those who are looking for issue alignment (15%).”

Progressives and advisers to Bernie Sanders hoped that they could keep Biden out of the race with a scandal that centers around personal space. The scandal though never really dominated the news like they hoped it or accelerated enough to damage the former vice president’s potential candidacy. Biden is still leading in the way too early polling, and he has seen no erosion in his support since the touching scandal started.

The challenge that any Democratic candidate faces is that Joe Biden has deep roots and a huge national organization of party officials. Biden is beloved by the party rank and file, and it is going to take more than what his political adversaries tried to turn into a scandal to stop his candidacy.

After seeing the behavior of porn star paying off, Access Hollywood tape accused sexual assaulter Trump, Joe Biden’s behavior doesn’t rise to the level of disqualifying in the minds of many Democrats.

Democratic voters may choose a different nominee, but Joe Biden is showing why he is going to be hard to beat in 2020.

If you want to know why Stacey Abrams has electrified many Democrats, take a look at an interview she gave at the Brookings Institution in February where she provided an up-close, extremely detailed account of voter suppression.

She explained that we’ve gone from Jim Crow laws and practices that blocked nonwhites from voting to a more sophisticated system of interlocking components. “Voter suppression acts as a means of denying those policies reality and it is baked into the DNA of America. It has been perfected in recent years, in the last two decades, in a way that lets us forget that it’s real because it has so many pieces, and that’s the architecture.”

She continued, “I think about it in three ways. There is the registration access, making it difficult to get on the rolls. You cannot vote in the United States unless you are signed up to do so. It’s like having a driver’s license. And so what we have found is that depending on the state you’re in, there have been impediments put in place to registration.” She then went through a series of laws in Southern states that block or eliminate voters from the rolls (e.g., purging the rolls).