Joe says no: Biden won’t run in ’16 for presidency
Decision a boost for front-runner Clinton
Vice President Biden’s announcement Wednesday that he will not seek the 2016 Democratic presidential nomination has given a further boost to resurgent front-runner Hillary Rodham Clinton and clarified her terms of engagement with Bernie Sanders, who is waging a challenge from her left.
Biden ended months of speculation with his blunt acknowledgment that “the window on mounting a realistic campaign for president” has closed for him, as he and his distraught family have worked through their grief over the death in May of his eldest son, Beau.
“Unfortunately, I believe we are out of time — the time necessary to mount a campaign for the nomination,” Biden said as President Barack Obama stood by his side in the White House Rose Garden.
Polls indicate that, had Biden jumped in at this late stage, he would have drawn votes primarily from Clinton. The two come from the same center-left sector of the Democratic Party, have similar long-standing institutional ties and allegiances within the party and can both claim relevant national security and legislative experience.
The massive interest surrounding Biden’s deliberations had underscored Clinton’s significant vulnerabilities, as well as strengths — both in her quest for the nomination and in a general election contest.
But the former secretary of state also has a formidable head start. After a bumpy few months, her standing has improved considerably over the past week, after her commanding performance at the first Democratic debate in Las Vegas. s “She was the likely nom-inee yesterday, and she’s sthe slightly more likely nominee today,” said Da-vid Axelrod, chief political strategist for Obama’s two presidential campaigns. s The Democratic primary now becomes a two-way race between Clinton dand Sanders, a Vermont senator who describes -himself as a Democratic -socialist. Sanders has been drawing massive crowds across the U.S., and he nearly matched Clinton’s fundraising in the most recent quarter.
“In some ways, it’s simpler now,” said Sanders adviser Tad Devine. “It’s Bernie. It’s Hillary. ... Choose one or the other.”
In the months leading up to the first debate, Clinton’s poll numbers had sagged under the weight of the email controversy, which had deepened public misgivings about her character, and the growing support for Sanders.
Lately, she has moved to the left on issues important to the Democratic base, including trade.
Her campaign has been displaying its muscle on the ground — which includes campaign offices in the early states and a staff many times larger than any other candidate on either side of the race.
Meanwhile, Biden’s deliberations loomed over the campaign. It became increasingly clear that he wanted to be president — a goal that he has had since he came to the Senate in the early 1970s, and that he sought twice. The question, for him and his family was whether it was achievable, and whether they had the emotional stamina for it in the wake of Beau Biden’s death.
In a wide-ranging speech that could have been the announcement address he would never deliver, Biden encouraged Democrats to run on Obama’s record next year. He touched on a host of policy goals and priorities he said he intends to tackle in the home stretch of the president’s second term.
“While I will not be a candidate, I will not be silent,” he said.
Although Biden is widely popular among Democrats, polls show that he would have entered the contest as a significant underdog. In a Washington Post-ABC News poll released Tuesday, 16 percent of Democraticleaning voters said they would support him for the nomination, putting him in third place behind Clinton at 54 percent and Sanders at 23 percent.