The departing vice-president’s profile rose during his years with Obama, and many on the left consider him a formidable opponent to Donald Trump

This article is more than 3 years old

This article is more than 3 years old

Anyone whose heart aches for the twists and turns of the 2016 presidential campaign can rejoice: speculation has already begun about the 2020 race.

On Monday, current vice-president, former senator and one-man meme machine Joe Biden said he would run for president in 2020 – maybe.

The departing vice-president, who will be 78 at the time of the next election, said it with a slight smile on his face. Given a chance to walk it back, he did – but only a little bit.

Biden was chatting with reporters after presiding over the Senate as it cleared away procedural hurdles to a biomedical research bill he’s supporting.

Asked by a reporter whether he would run again, Biden said he would in 2020 – for president. Asked if he was joking, he said he wasn’t committing to not running.

How Joe Biden became the US’s meme-in-chief Read more

“I learned a long time ago, fate has a strange way of intervening.”

Barack Obama’s popular vice-president was first elected as a US senator from the state of Delaware in 1973, winning re-election six times.

He was the focus of intense speculation in 2015 over whether he would choose to challenge Hillary Clinton in the Democratic presidential primary for this cycle.

In October 2015 he ended the debate with the announcement that he would not run, saying that his family had only recently begun to recover from losing their eldest son Beau to cancer in May of the same year.

“As my family and I have worked through the grieving process,” he said, “I’ve said all along that it may very well be that that process, by the time we get through it, closes the window on mounting a realistic campaign for president. I’ve concluded it has closed.”

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Obama and Biden: the internet’s favorite ‘bromance’. Photograph: Pete Souza/The White House

Biden has sought the presidency twice before: once for the 1988 election and once for the 2008 election, dropping out of the race early both times.

But during his time as Obama’s second-in-command he developed a much higher public profile, and a close relationship – some say a “bromance” – with the president which has led him to be considered one of the most powerful vice-presidents in American history.

To many on the left, Biden would be a formidable choice to face Donald Trump if the new president-elect runs for a second term.

Biden is popular among working-class voters in the Appalachians and the Rust Belt, places where Clinton struggled to combat Trump’s populist appeal.

But he can also be gaffe-prone, once exhorting a Missouri state senator who uses a wheelchair to “stand up!” in front of a crowd while campaigning for Obama in 2008.