Biden yet to announce presidential bid, critics feel he’s waited too long

WASHINGTON: As US vice-president Joe Biden hosted a school reunion last Tuesday, Democratic frontrunner Hillary Clinton took the game, set and match at the party’s first presidential debate.

A party worried about her ongoing troubles over private emails, felt calmed, and so did antsy donor, who had begun looking for an alternative to rally around, basically Biden.

Talk still continues of an impending announcement — any day this weekend, was the last heard on it — of Biden entering the race, ending weeks and months of speculation.

His family is on board, said a report Friday, a day after a longtime friend and confidant of the vice-president sent out an email urging troops of the Biden world to be ready to go.

“I am confident that the vice president is aware of the practical demands of making a final decision soon. He has been in public and political life a long time and he has a good grip on the mechanics around this decision,” the friend, former senator Ted Kaufman said in the email. “I think it’s fair to say, knowing him as well as we all do, that it won’t be a scripted affair — after all, it’s Joe.”

But pundits and commentary warn that the vice-president, who is very well-liked by voters in the party and even outside among independents, may have waited too long.

The best time for him to have announced was when Clinton looked extremely vulnerable, troubled by the email-controversy and weighed down by plummeting polls.

The former secretary of state was found untrustworthy even by Democratic voters, and donors were believed otbe getting skittish about investing in her candidacy.

The she began began pulling away with a campaign reboot funded by a huge war chest. She topped that with a stellar debate performance and suddenly Biden became less exciting.