Senator John McCain lost both the popular vote and electoral vote in the 2008 presidential election against a virtually unknown candidate, Barack Hussein Obama. Without the wildly popular former Alaska governor, Sarah Palin, who he chose as his running mate, most people wouldn’t even remember that John McCain, in fact, was a presidential candidate. Yet, as the Senator appears to be facing his final days, John McCain can’t help but spend his time wishing out loud he would have chosen a Democrat as his running mate instead, and encouraging the former vice president and Democrat who will most likely to run against Donald Trump in 2020, to keep up the fight…

Battling brain cancer at his family ranch in Arizona, 81-year-old Sen. John McCain has been sharing his hopes for the future of the country and reflections on his political life with friends who visit. For former Vice President Joe Biden, McCain’s message was a simple one: don’t “walk away” from politics, Biden told The New York Times, describing his conversation with the Arizona Republican.

McCain and Biden may be on opposite sides of the aisle, but through their decades in politics, they’ve forged a friendship, as did McCain with Biden’s two sons. Biden has yet to make any announcement about whether he will run in 2020, after declining to run in 2016 following the death of his son, Beau. After visiting McCain last weekend at his ranch, Biden told the Times the Arizona senator is still preoccupied with the future of the country.

“Here John knows he’s in a very, very, very precarious situation, and yet he’s still concerned about the state of the country,” Mr. Biden said in an interview. “We talked about how our international reputation is being damaged and we talked about the need for people to stand up and speak out.”

Looking back, McCain has some regrets. In a new HBO documentary, McCain says he wished he had selected his friend Democratic Sen. Joe Lieberman as his running mate in the 2008 presidential race, over firebrand Sarah Palin. McCain calls failing to go against the advice of some advisers to pick Lieberman “another mistake that I made.”

Lieberman told the Times he was unaware of McCain’s regret over the matter until he watched the documentary, saying, “It touched me greatly.”

Intimates of McCain, the Times reports, have told the White House Vice President Mike Pence should attend his funeral, instead of Mr. Trump, with whom McCain has very publicly disagreed. –CBS News

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