There was so, so much going for a Joe Biden presidential campaign — wasn’t there? His shaggy-dog “authenticity,” the tantalizing possibility of a Hillary Clinton face plant, the endless egging-on by a D.C. press corps that coveted a Joe-vs.-Hillary fight over a dreary, substance-y battle between Clinton and a Larry David doppelgänger.

The solitary item in the “no” column: reality.


Joe Biden was a bad presidential candidate in 1988 and 2008, and he didn’t seem to be brandishing many new skills (especially discipline or a measured tongue) in his more than four decades of public life.

At 72, with his 46-year-old son, Beau (whom he viewed as the most likely president in the Biden family), buried less than six months ago, the vice president’s restless mind alighted on an unexpected path to a political future — until his gaze returned to reality and legacy. In the end, he opted to stop where he stood — as an uncommonly powerful and collaborative vice president.

Here are five takeaways from Biden’s withdrawal from a race he never entered, but briefly shaped:

1. It was never going to happen. From the start of the saga, people close to Biden portrayed his decision less as a matter of political opportunism than an exorcism of his personal grief over Beau Biden’s death. This is a concept alien to political reporters accustomed to having their most cynical assumptions about candidates mercilessly confirmed. But Biden isn’t, to his credit, a regular politician. The idea of mounting a 2016 campaign first sprouted in his mind in the days after his son’s May funeral — when condolence callers would casually slip in references to Clinton’s email troubles and add, "Hey Joe, you could do much better."

Biden, my sources in his orbit have repeatedly told me, believed his greatest legacy would have been Beau’s election to the presidency — not his own — and he cherished the idea that the shattered boy rescued from the car wreck that killed his wife and baby daughter would someday occupy the Oval Office. With that dream gone, he picked up the flag himself and began to believe the overly optimistic reports that his dedicated inner circle — especially the exhortations of his surviving son, Hunte,r and longtime adviser Mike Donilon — were feeding him.

As his team huddled at the vice president’s mansion for weeks, it became increasingly clear that the planning was more “fantasy football than football,” in the words of a longtime ally. All the leaks in the world about how he was meeting with unions, donors and political operatives couldn’t compensate for the fact that there were not enough actual unions, donors or operatives to kick-start a campaign organized months later than usual.

“The enablers and the media were ginning him up, but anybody who knows him never thought he would actually do it,” the person added. “In the end, he’s a political guy, and he knew what the real deal was.”



2. The GOP is bummed he’s out. You want spin? Here’s Republican National Committee Chairman Reince Priebus’ statement on Biden’s decision not to run. “The Vice President’s decision not to enter the 2016 race is a major blow for Democrats, who now will almost certainly be saddled with their unpopular and scandal plagued front-runner Hillary Clinton,” he said in a statement. “Biden was the most formidable general election candidate the Democrat Party could have fielded.” It’s true that Biden has been faring better than Clinton in some recent head-to-heads with GOP candidates — but such matchups are meaningless this far from Election Day and Biden, sitting on the sidelines, hadn’t been degraded by the steady barrage of attacks Clinton has absorbed.

Over the past few weeks, conservatives have been among the most enthusiastic promoters of a Biden candidacy (hours before Biden pulled the plug, Weekly Standard editor Bill Kristol tweeted: “Biden confirms to Obama at lunch today he's running, announces at U Delaware tomorrow. You can feel the Joementum!”).

There’s good reason for that: Nearly every recent poll shows Biden pulling support from Clinton, not Bernie Sanders — and Clinton’s lead over Sanders pops up by 8 or 10 points when Biden is excluded from most national polls. No Biden means a stronger Clinton — period.

3. He wouldn’t have been a great candidate anyway. Pre-campaigns are a pretty good predictors of actual campaigns. Clinton hobbled hers late last year with a secret State Department deal on her email server, and Biden’s was a similar bust. With the exception of his extraordinarily emotional appearance on Stephen Colbert’s show in September, the planning and communications process was sloppy, leaky and improvisational — in other words, Biden-y.

On Tuesday — at a moment when he already was leaning heavily against running — Biden saw fit to retroactively correct what has been the biggest embarrassment of his vice presidency, his initial reluctance to back the raid that killed Osama bin Laden (Hillary Clinton, of course, had enthusiastically backed the kill order).

Obama has, inconveniently, portrayed Biden as one of the lone dissenters — so there he was, contradicting the boss, Clinton and the fact-checking media. Then there was the small matter of campaign strategy: Biden believed his path to the nomination ran through South Carolina — more out of his inability to compete in Iowa or New Hampshire than by virtue of a coherent battle plan.

And message? People close to Biden say the planning never got much beyond his usual pledge of allegiance to the working class, and his rambling, off the ‘prompter Rose Garden statement Wednesday showed that he still lacks the discipline to stick to a script — even if he found one.

4. Don’t expect a Clinton endorsement anytime soon. It would be going too far to say calls by Clinton campaign chairman John Podesta for Biden to make up his mind quickly had enraged the prideful vice president — but he didn’t much like it. Over the past week, he’s taken several sideways shots at the Democratic front-runner (and onetime semi-pal) — singling out her debate quip that she viewed Republicans as “enemies.” In the frothy run-up to the campaign announcement that never came, these remarks were duly regarded as proof he was about to challenge Clinton. No. They were proof he was pissed.

In his Rose Garden statement, Biden hinted that he will be a vigilant wingman guarding the Obama legacy over the next 15 months — presumably against the ever-triangulating Clinton. But the harsh reality of electoral realpolitik is that Biden’s influence will fade to the vanishing point now that he poses no material threat to her candidacy. His one remaining source of political leverage? An endorsement, which Clinton will likely seek during one or another inevitable future swoon.

5. Elizabeth Warren is the only one left. Ultimately, Biden’s fate was decided when he chose not to jump into the race in time for the first Democratic debate on Oct. 13. Clinton dominated, her sagging poll numbers sprung back, and his sole rationale — as a late-game Hillary replacement — evaporated, at least for the moment. Indeed, the only actual path for Biden, in the estimate of many Democratic operatives and elected officials, was a full Clinton collapse precipitated by a criminal indictment connected with the emails (which seems unlikely) or some other event that would cause her to bow out, ceding the race to Sanders.

With Biden out, Hillary-phobic fantasists are left with only one dream alternative — Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren, who remains the favorite of many on the party’s ascendant left. And she would rather sell mortgage derivatives for Citigroup than seek the presidency.

