Joe Biden says no to 2016 presidential race

Nicole Gaudiano | USA TODAY

Show Caption Hide Caption Joe Biden announces he's not running for president Vice President Joe Biden will not go head to head with Hillary Clinton to seek the 2016 democratic nomination for president. He said too many logistical challenges remain just months before votes are cast.

WASHINGTON — Ending months of speculation about his political future, Vice President Biden announced Wednesday he won't run for president, saying the window for entering the race has closed.

"Unfortunately, I believe we're out of time, the time necessary to mount a winning campaign for the nomination," said Biden, who sought the Democratic presidential nomination in 1988 and 2008. "But while I will not be a candidate, I will not be silent. I intend to speak out clearly and forcefully, to influence as much as I can where we stand as a party and where we need to go as a nation.”

Biden, 72, a former U.S. senator, has been grieving and weighing family needs since his 46-year-old son Beau, Delaware’s former attorney general, died of brain cancer on May 30. Reports that Beau, in his final days, urged his father to run for president stoked national speculation again about a possible bid.

Biden said Wednesday the grieving process "doesn't respect or much care about things like filing deadlines or debates and primaries and caucuses." He said he and his family have reached the point where thinking of Beau "brings a smile" before tears.

"Beau is our inspiration," he said.

Biden spoke from the Rose Garden as his wife, Jill, and President Obama looked on. He urged Democrats to build on the successes of the Obama administration in the coming presidential campaign.

“This party, our nation, will be making a tragic mistake if we walk away or attempt to undo the Obama legacy,” he said. “Democrats should not only defend this record and protect this record, they should run on the record.”

Biden listed priorities that include "giving the middle class a fighting chance," reforming immigration policies and campaign finance laws, and rooting out institutional racism.

"We need, as the president has proposed, to triple the child care tax credit," he said.

Biden also said the country needs “a moonshot” to cure cancer and vowed to spend his next 15 months in office fighting for increased funding for research and development.

“If I could be anything, I would have wanted to be the president that ended cancer, because it’s possible,” he said, calling the issue "personal."

To the delight of progressives, Biden joined the call for debt-free college, saying “we need to commit to 16 years of free public education for all of our children.”

"We can pay for all of this with one simple step, by limiting the deductions in the tax code to 28 percent of income," he said.

He also called for an end to “divisive partisan politics,” repeating a statement he made Tuesday that could be perceived as a dig at Democratic presidential front-runner Hillary Clinton. During the first Democratic debate on Oct. 13, Clinton listed Republicans among the enemies she’s most proud of making.

“I don’t think we should look at Republicans as our enemies,” Biden said Wednesday. “And for the sake of the country, we have to work together.”

Reince Priebus, Republican National Committee chairman, called Biden’s decision a “major blow” for Democrats, saying Biden was “the most formidable general election candidate the Democrat Party could have fielded, and his decision not to challenge Hillary Clinton greatly improves our chances of taking back the White House.”

GOP presidential candidate Donald Trump tweeted, "I think Joe Biden made correct decision for him & his family. Personally, I would rather run against Hillary because her record is so bad."

Rumors had swirled about what Biden would do. Supporters said before Wednesday it would be understandable if he decided to sit out the 2016 race.

“No one would blame him if he said, ‘You know, look, it’s just too much,’” supporter Dick Harpootlian, former chairman of South Carolina’s Democratic Party, said in June.

Sen. Tom Carper, D-Del., said Oct. 6 that only within the previous week or so had Biden "gotten to a place where he can actually talk about his son without crying. It's still tender." On Wednesday, Carper said he had encouraged Biden during the past several weeks to listen to his family as they continued to grieve.

"I know he heard from people across the country who urged him to run and offered to help, but the most important influences on his decision were his wife, Jill, their children and grandchildren, and God," Carper said in a statement.

Former Sen. Ted Kaufman of Delaware, Biden’s former chief of staff in the Senate, said Biden and his wife told advisers Tuesday night to prepare for an announcement Wednesday that he wouldn't be running.

"We had the financial commitments, we had the top people for our organization but it was clear that we didn’t have the time and that the window had closed," Kaufman said.

Biden’s announcement came a day before Clinton is scheduled to testify before a special House committee on her role as secretary of state during the 2012 terrorist attacks on a U.S. diplomatic compound in Benghazi, Libya.

Former Obama strategist David Axelrod told CNN he believes Biden timed his announcement so it wouldn’t appear to be a reaction to Clinton’s performance at the high-profile hearing. Biden also likely wanted to make his intentions clear before Iowa’s largest gathering of Democrats on Saturday at the annual Jefferson-Jackson Dinner.

"His time was earlier in the campaign, not now," Axelrod said.

Biden represented Delaware in the Senate for 36 years, beginning in 1973. He took his first oath of office next to Beau Biden’s hospital bed about a month after a car accident that killed his first wife, Neilia, and their 13-month-old daughter. The accident injured Beau Biden and his brother, Hunter.

“He's the luckiest person I've known, and the unluckiest person I've known," Kaufman said after Beau’s death. "He says it all the time, 'There are people who have had worse experiences than I have.' But I don't know any of them."

The Draft Biden super PAC, launched by former Biden staffers and campaign veterans, had hired staff in early voting states and raised funds for independent expenditures in support of his possible candidacy. The group recently released its first national TV ad, focused on his ability to overcome personal tragedy, to media outlets. But they decided not to air it after a report that Biden did not want the emotional video to run.

"We are so grateful for the gigantic outpouring of support from hundreds of thousands of Americans around the country in our effort to encourage the Vice President to run," Will Pierce, executive director of Draft Biden 2016, said in a statement. "While the Vice President has decided not to run, we know that over the next year he will stand up for all Americans and articulate a vision for America's future that will leave no one behind."

Biden would have faced organizational challenges had he decided to enter the presidential race this late. Armies of volunteers and staff already are helping Clinton and other candidates in early primary states.

Biden’s candidacy presumably would have taken away some support from Clinton, whose supporters are ideologically similar to his. Recent polls showed support declining for Clinton as it increased for Biden. A Real Clear Politics average of recent national polls showed 47.8% support for Clinton, 16.8% support for Biden and 25.7% support for Sen. Bernie Sanders of Vermont, an independent and self-described democratic socialist also running for the Democratic nomination.

Clinton, in a statement, called Biden a "good man and a great vice president," saying she admires his "devotion to family, his grace in grief, his grit and determination on behalf of the middle class, and his unyielding faith in America’s promise."

"I am confident that history isn’t finished with Joe Biden," she said.

Sanders, in a statement, called Biden a "good friend" and thanked him for his lifetime of public service.

"I look forward to continuing to work with him to address the major crises we face," Sanders said. "He understands the need to rebuild the middle class; and to address income and wealth inequality, a corrupt campaign finance system, climate change, racial justice, immigration reform and the need for publicly-funded higher education.”

Before becoming vice president, Biden served stints as chairman of the Senate Judiciary and Foreign Relations committees. He has been an unusually active vice president, partly because of his long-standing relationships with lawmakers on Capitol Hill.

He has negotiated down-to-the-wire agreements on fiscal issues, including proposals to extend the Bush-era tax cuts, legislation to increase the nation’s borrowing limit, and a strategy for avoiding the “fiscal cliff” of spending cuts and tax increases in 2013.

Biden was dubbed “Sheriff Joe” for his oversight of the 2009 economic stimulus program and he oversaw the draw-down of troops in Iraq in 2010. More recently, the White House tapped Biden to lobby members of Congress to support the nuclear agreement with Iran.

Biden withdrew from the 2008 Democratic presidential primary race after a poor showing in the Iowa caucuses. He dropped out of the 1988 race amid reports he had plagiarized a portion of a speech that he said he had forgotten to attribute.

G. Terry Madonna, director of the Center for Politics and Public Affairs at Franklin and Marshall College in Pennsylvania, said he expects Biden to write his memoirs now that the presidential campaign question is behind him. And Biden still could put his decades of experience at speechmaking to work.

“He’ll be very popular on the lecture tour. I don’t think there’s any doubt about that,” Madonna said.

Members of Delaware’s Democratic congressional delegation on Wednesday issued statements of support for Biden, saying they believed he would continue his work. Carper said Biden will “have the opportunity to serve as our ambassador to the world” when he leaves office while Sen. Chris Coons said Biden would continue to add his voice “to our nation’s ongoing debate about security in an uncertain world and opportunity for the middle class.”

Rep. John Carney, D-Del., who is running for governor, said he’s “disappointed” Biden isn’t running, but in some ways, he respects Biden even more for the decision.

“What we heard from Joe today was a continuation of his longstanding commitment to fighting for the middle class and opportunity for all Americans,” Carney said. “I know he means it when he says he has no plan to give up that fight.”

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