Biden opted out of race because he ‘couldn’t win’
WASHINGTON: Vice-president Joe Biden decided to not join the 2016 White House race because he concluded he couldn’t win,he said in an interview Sunday night. That he had run out of time.
“I’ll be very blunt, if I thought we could’ve put together the campaign that our supporters deserve and our contributors deserved I’ll-- I would have gone ahead and done it.”
But the truth is, Biden said, he “Couldn’t win” in response to a question on why he decided not to run — “(because) you couldn’t win or that you didn’t want to run”.
The vice-president, who remains extremely popular in his Democratic party and with Republicans, said he had no plans of fading away though from the scene even after leaving office.
“I hope I leave office in-- as a respected figure who can convene people and bring people together,” Biden said, prefacing that by saying he will never run for office again.
Biden’s wife, Jill Biden, who sat with him for a large portion of the interview, said she had bene pushing him to run and she was disappointed by his decision to not join the race.
Experts and pundits has said Biden had a good chance of winning the nomination some weeks ago when Hillary Clinton, the frontrunner, looked in trouble over ongoing controversies.
The Clinton campaign then rebooted itself and she went on to deliver an excellent performance at the party’s first presidential debate last week. Biden’s announcement came two days after.
To a question if his remarks from the announcement — when he urged Democrats to not treat Republicans as enemies — were meant for Clinton, he denied it categorically.
He said Clinton, who had named Republican as an enemy she was proud of — and several others — during the debate, “more humorous than she was direct about that”.