Article snippet: HAMPTON, N.H. — Former vice president Joe Biden cruised into New Hampshire Monday as the early front-runner of a sprawling presidential field, greeting voters who donned his old campaign buttons or clutched copies of his books, eager to embrace the familiar he represents. But instead of basking in a warm welcome — as a typical favorite is wont to do — Biden used his first visit to the Granite State as an official 2020 contender to defend his long record in public life from a laundry list of critiques of his policies on criminal justice and the environment that have shadowed him since he entered the presidential race late last month. “There’s a whole lot of talk about, you know, Biden and the crime bill, Biden wrote a crime bill,” the Delaware Democrat said, alluding to his role in developing the 1994 law that created new gun restrictions and crime prevention measures but now is blamed for contributing to mass incarceration. Biden is running, he told crowds in a packed pizza parlor here and an airy community college space in Manchester, to “restore the soul of this country,” and he drew heavily on voters’ nostalgia for the Obama administration in which he served. But Biden’s long record in public life has also provided fodder for his critics and primary opponents seeking to knock him off his perch atop the polls, and Monday’s events were an early test of how he plans to address them. Biden was particularly keen to rebut criticism of his environmental record and pe... Link to the full article to read more