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Joe Biden will be three weeks shy of his 78th birthday when Americans next vote in a presidential election in 2020. Barack Obama’s former vice-president was first elected to the U.S. Senate in 1972, the same year Richard Nixon won a second term in the Oval Office.

The scrappy former Delaware senator is an old-fashioned, moderate Democrat at a time when his party has been overtaken by progressive activists who want to make the 2020 vote not just about ousting Donald Trump, but about radically expanding U.S. government.

Mr. Biden has no grassroots organization to mobilize Democratic voters in early primary states, nor a ready online operation to raise millions in small donations as Senator Bernie Sanders, former congressman Beto O’Rourke or Pete Buttigieg, the mayor of South Bend, Ind., have formed.

There’s also the matter of the stream of women who have come forward to recount instances where Mr. Biden bestowed unwanted – and in their view inappropriate – affection upon them. It’s hardly the kind of character-vouching anyone considering running for president in 2020 would invite.

Indeed, with the above rap sheet, you might think Joe Biden has little chance of winning the 2020 Democratic presidential nomination. And yet, for months, he has led the polls among Democratic primary voters before even entering the race, and even as more than a dozen other “names” jumped in.

After months of keeping Democrats guessing, Mr. Biden is set to enter the race himself on Thursday, becoming the 20th candidate in a crowded field. Rarely have Democrats been so ideologically divided, with this primary race shaping up to be a bitterly fought battle.

That Mr. Biden has consistently topped the polls speaks to the desire of many mainstream Democrats to settle early on a consensus candidate who can win back the white, working- and middle-class voters in swing states who helped elect Mr. Trump in 2016. Nicknamed “Scranton Joe” – owing to the working-class Pennsylvania city where he was born – Mr. Biden is seen as a traditional pro-union Democrat who won’t scare off suburban voters with talk of a radically redistributive tax system or an end to private health insurance.

For moderate Democrats and Republicans alike, Mr. Biden is the only candidate who could repair the damage Mr. Trump has done by restoring continuity to U.S. foreign policy and re-establishing U.S. leadership in a dangerous world.

He may also be the only one who thinks bipartisanship is not a dirty word. As vice-president, Mr. Biden played a critical role in getting Mr. Obama out of tough spots. During repeated standoffs between the administration and Republicans in Congress over the U.S. debt ceiling and spending, it was usually Mr. Biden – who had spent 36 years in the Senate – who worked out the compromises needed to move forward.

The question facing Mr. Biden is whether the insurgents currently rising within the Democratic Party could ever warm to his candidacy. He would, after all, likely seek to yank the party in the opposite direction from where they want to take it.

Much will depend on how he frames his message, and how badly Democrats want to win in 2020. Any early stumbles – or a failure to raise enough money to keep up with Mr. Sanders and others – could doom Mr. Biden’s candidacy before it barely gets started.

His previous attempts at winning the nomination were cut short by a series of gaffes and cash problems. In 1988, he withdrew after plagiarism allegations. In 2007, as he launched his bid for the 2008 nomination, he called Mr. Obama “the first mainstream African-American [to run for the presidency] who is articulate and bright and clean and a nice-looking guy.”

It was an awkward comment, meant as compliment, that came out the wrong way. It was also quintessential Joe Biden. Mr. Obama evidently did not hold it against him; he made him his running mate, in part based on Mr. Biden’s strong foreign-policy credentials (which Mr. Obama lacked) and his appeal among white working-class voters in the Rust Belt.

Mr. Biden also has an inspiring personal story to tell, overcoming tragedy to dedicate his life to public service. His first wife and a daughter were killed in a car accident only weeks after his 1972 election to the Senate, and his son Beau Biden died of brain cancer at 46 in 2015.

I don’t know if Mr. Biden would “beat the hell out of” Mr. Trump, as he bragged last year. But he’d sure give him a hell of a fight.

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