Vice President Joe Biden ended weeks of speculation on Wednesday and announced he will not run for the Democratic presidential nomination. Biden appeared with President Barack Obama in the Rose Garden on Wednesday and noted there was a window for running for president. “I’ve concluded that it has closed,” Biden said, explaining his family is doing better after the death of his son, Delaware Attorney General Beau Biden. “Beau was our inspiration.”
Saying it would be a “tragic mistake” to turn away from the “Obama legacy” and urged Democrats to run on the president’s record in 2016, Biden said he would remain politically active.
“While I will not be a candidate, I will not be silent,” Biden said before turning to issues.
At the event, the vice president called for a “moonshot moment” for Americans to come together to work on curing cancer, promising to focus during his his remaining 15 months in office on that issue.
“If I could be anything, I wanted to be the president who ended cancer, because it’s possible,” Biden said.
The vice president also called for less partisanship and more opportunities for the middle class, including making higher education more affordable.
Biden ran for the Democratic nomination in both 1988 and 2008 with little success. Polls at the national level and of key states have shown the vice president behind former U.S. Sec. of State Hillary Clinton in the Democratic primary. Biden did not throw his support behind Clinton or any of the other Democratic candidates running for president.
Had Biden entered the race, he would have been running against history. Now 72, Biden would have been the oldest president at the start of his first term had he won. He would have also faced challenges associated with being vice president. Since Martin Van Buren succeeded Andrew Jackson in the 1836 election, only two sitting vice presidents -- Richard Nixon in 1960 and George H.W. Bush in 1988 -- went on to win their party’s presidential nomination and only one -- Bush -- would become president by winning the general election.
As he closed the door on running for president, Biden insisted he would use his remaining time on the national political stage to advance his agenda.
“We intend to spend the next 15 months fighting for what we have always cared about,” Biden said.
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