Former Vice President Joe Biden almost announced a 2020 bid for the White House in a Delaware speech. | Andrew Harnik/AP Photo 2020 Elections Biden announces he’s running — then corrects himself

For an instant, Joe Biden was running.

A verbal slip by the former vice president brought a crowd of Democrats in his home state of Delaware to their feet on Saturday, encapsulating the feverish speculation that he intends to make a play for the White House in 2020.


“I know I get criticized. I’m told I get criticized by the new left,” Biden said during his keynote remarks at the First State Democratic Dinner in Dover. “I have the most progressive record of anybody running for the — anybody who would run.”

But before Biden could finish his thought, a chorus of cheers had broken out in the ballroom of the Dover Downs Hotel and Casino, with attendees rising from their tables to cheer the former Delaware senator.

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“I didn’t mean,” Biden said, raising his hands to quell the audience. He chuckled, looked down at the lectern, and made the sign of the cross on his chest.

“Of anybody who would run,” Biden concluded.

Sen. Chris Coons (D-Del.) said to reporters earlier in the evening that Biden has told him that “he is all but certain he is going to run.” And addressing the dinner ahead of Biden’s remarks, Coons said he is “confident that 598 days from now, we will together be celebrating” a new commander in chief.

“Folks, I am praying for that man. And I am excited to hear from him just a few minutes from now,” Coons said. “And I am confident that’s our vice president, Joe Biden.”