JOE BIDEN: ‘I THINK I COULD HAVE WON’

A year and a half after giving up a 45-year-old dream to become president, Joe Biden told an audience on Friday that he could have beaten Donald Trump, had the death of a child not intervened.

The former vice president began the evening in typical Biden style: speaking for nearly an hour from a stage at Colgate University, seldom looking at his notes as he covered a variety of topics, including the middle class and the digital revolution.

Then he sat down with the university’s president, Brian W. Casey, unbuttoned his suit jacket, folded his hands and became quiet. “Did you ever think, what if?”Casey asked.“Any regrets that you didn’t run?” Biden breathed deeply and looked down before he answered the question. He had openly desired the presidency since winning a U.S. Senate seat in 1972, The Washington Post reported. He had twice attempted to win the Democratic nomination before the 2016 race, which — he looked back up at Casey before answering the question — “I think I could have won.” He said he thought himself more qualified than any other candidate. “I had a lot of data,”Biden said.“I was fairly confident that if I was the Democratic Party nominee, I had a better-than-even chance of being president.” “But, um.” Biden looked at his hand, flexing it back and forth. “I lost part of my soul, my, uh.”He cleared his throat.“Excuse me.” He then recounted how the sudden illness and death of his son Beau Biden in the runup to the Democratic primaries weighed on his decision to contest in the 2016 race.

“The press began to think I was playing a game, but I couldn’t tell them about my boy,” Biden said.“He wanted me to run . ... My son Hunter, my daughter Ashley, my wife, all thought I should.”

“I didn’t,”he said.“At the end of the day, I just couldn’t do it.”