“Unfortunately,
I believe we’re out of time, the time necessary to mount a winning
campaign for the nomination,” Biden declared in a hastily announced and
emotional statement in the Rose Garden of the White House.
The vice president spoke with his wife, Dr. Jill Biden, and President Obama standing at his side.
The
announcement capped months of speculation about whether he still had
time to build the kind of fundraising and get-out-the-vote structure
required for successful modern campaigns. Public opinion polls never
showed him leading the frontrunner for the Democratic nomination, former
secretary of state Hillary Clinton, and veteran party strategists
privately doubted he could seriously challenge her for the affections of
party activists.
The
announcement came one day before Clinton is to testify before the
Republican-run House of Representatives committee looking into the
deadly Benghazi attacks of 2012.
Biden,
who has spent his entire adult life in politics and made two failed
runs for the presidency, pledged to keep defending Obama’s legacy and
fighting for the middle class, and warned Democratic candidates against
running away from the president’s record.
“While
I will not be a candidate, I will not be silent. I intend to speak out
clearly and forcefully to influence as much as I can where we stand as a
party and where we need to go as a nation,” he said in an extended
section of remarks that sounded very much like the stump speech he would
have used if he had run.
Vice
President Joe Biden with his wife, Jill, and President Obama on
Wednesday after announcing that he will not run for president. (Photo:
Jacquelyn Martin/AP)
“This
is what I believe: I believe that President Obama has led this nation
from crisis to recovery and we’re now on the cusp of resurgence. I’m
proud to have played a part in that,” Biden said. “This party, [and] our
nation would be making a tragic mistake if we walk away [from] or
attempt to undo the Obama legacy. The American people have worked too
hard and we’ve come too far for that. Democrats should not only defend
this record and protect this record, they should run on the record.”
Biden
had long seemed eager to mount another presidential run, casting
himself as the logical heir to the Obama legacy, and eager to turn two
terms as a well-regarded vice president in a consequential
administration into a shot at the top job. But Beau Biden’s battle with
cancer and his death in May dealt a crushing emotional blow to the Biden
family.
“As
the family and I have worked through the grieving process, I’ve said
all along what I’ve said time and again to others: That it may very well
be that that process, by the time we get through it, closes the window
on mounting a realistic campaign for president. That it might close,”
Biden said. “I’ve concluded it has closed.”
The
vice president pledged to devote his last 15 months in office to trying
to rally Democrats and Republicans behind “a moon shot in this country
to cure cancer” — the kind of full-government mobilization that made
Neil Armstrong’s fabled “giant leap for mankind” possible.
“If I could be anything, I would have wanted to have been the president that ended cancer, because it’s possible,” Biden said.
AGENCY REPORTS
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