Vice President Joe Biden is feeling frustrated with the pressure to make up his mind on a presidential run, people who’ve talked with him say, and Wednesday, Democratic officials got to hear just how torn he is.

The conference call was supposed to be about Iran — and took the place of an appearance at the Democratic National Committee’s summer meeting alongside all the declared candidates, as he was invited to do — but the first question he was asked was what the deal was with him.


He didn’t know, he said.

“I have to be able to commit to all of you that I would be able to give it my whole heart and my whole soul, and right now, both are pretty well banged up,” Biden said, according to several people on the call.

“He sounded like he was a man in the midst of a big decision,” said a person on the call.

Biden said he needed to figure out whether he had the “emotional fuel” to go forward, the person said.

Meanwhile, Hillary Clinton was in Iowa, pouring on her own fuel.

“I cannot even imagine the grief and the heartbreak,” she said.

“Vice President Biden is a friend of mine — he and I were colleagues in the Senate, I worked with him as first lady, I worked with him in President Obama’s first term, and I have a great deal of admiration and respect for him,” she said. “I think he has to make what is a very difficult decision for himself and his family, and he should have the space and opportunity to decide what he wants to do.”

She said it all standing with Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack, the state’s former governor, whose endorsement her campaign just happened to roll out this week. He could have come out for her at any point — the Iowa caucuses aren’t for months, and there aren’t any pressing agriculture issues that Clinton’s suddenly put out a white paper on.

But he just happens to be one of the longest-serving members of Obama’s Cabinet, spending the last seven years working with Biden, and now he’s the first member of the administration to make a 2016 endorsement, right in the midst of the biggest Biden flare-up yet.

Or in other words: Yep. This is how it’s going to be. Come on in if you want.

Everything about the Biden presidential exploration has been improvisational, and Tuesday’s conference call was no exception, scheduled for right when many of the invited Democratic National Committee members were getting on and off planes to get to their summer meeting in Minneapolis. About 80 were on the phone, but from officers down to state chairs to the rank-and-file members, many of them missed it. Technical problems kept others off, the conference call line repeatedly hanging up on them.

A bunch who could have made it decided not to call in at all — they didn’t feel they needed to hear anything more about the nuclear deal. Biden did spend the first hour of the call talking about the agreement; one person listening described it as the vice president “eloquently and thoroughly” going through the details, setting up the arguments against it and knocking it down.

But what they all wanted to know was would he get in. “All ships rise with the tide, that’s what we say here in Rhode Island,” said state Democratic chairman Joe McNamara, who missed the call because he was in transit but said many Democrats will be excited and more of them will be interested if Biden jumps in.

Meanwhile, White House press secretary Josh Earnest was pushed yet again on where the White House stands: Earnest repeated that the president would make an endorsement at some point — leaving open whether that was a promise or a threat.

Asked whether Obama prefers Clinton over Biden, Earnest said only, “the president has not delivered that message to me, so I can’t account for all of the conversations the president has had at the White House.”

Then he went nice: Obama’s pick of Biden as a running mate obviously reflected that Obama believes Biden has the “aptitude for the job of president of the United States.”

Biden hasn’t left many people in the White House with the impression that he’s actually going to go forward with a race. He has left them with the impression that he’s struggling and being coy.

“Well, listen, if the vice president is winking and nodding,” Earnest said about the conference call, “it will be hard to tell because he’ll be on the phone.”

Alice Germond, the former DNC secretary, dropped off the call before Biden answered the question about his presidential musings. She’s headed to Minneapolis on Thursday. But Wednesday evening, she had to make sure to walk her dog before getting on a call that Clinton was doing.

“I had to work out my schedule around the vice president,” she said, “and the person who’s going to be president.”

As Biden continues to figure out what to do, he’s going to spend Thursday in Washington meeting with senior advisers, according to a schedule put out late Wednesday.