Joe Biden finally admitted the thing that many people probably assumed was true by now, that being the former VP regrets not running for president in 2016 and seeing if he could prevail over Hillary Clinton in the Democratic primaries. According to reports from Variety, Biden had a speaking engagement at Colgate University over the weekend and finally came clean with how he feels about his decision to stay out of the political fray in the most recent election. The former VP, fun uncle of the White House, and seemingly all around good guy said that,
“I had planned on running for president and although it would have been a very difficult primary, I think I could have won. I don’t know, maybe not. But I thought I could have won.
I had a lot of data and I was fairly confident that if I were the Democratic Party’s nominee, I had a better than even chance of being president. But do I regret not being president? Yes. I was the best qualified.”
The data Biden speaks of is mostly likely the polling numbers his team collected in the midst of the primaries, a display of dipping his toe in the water that many people took to be Biden campaigning and gauging his chances without actually having to join in with the Democratic debates and legitimately campaign.
While many in the US probably would have come out to vote for Uncle Joe, there’s no guarantee Democratic turnout would have increased on November 8th if Biden was the Democratic nominee rather than Hillary Clinton. There are endless variables that decide a presidential election so Biden over Hillary (and thus Biden over Trump) wouldn’t have been a guaranteed result should Biden have decided running was a good idea.
His reasoning for not running at the time was that it was too close to the death of his beloved son Beau, in the spring of 2015. Of course, the news broke recently that Beau’s widow Hallie and Biden’s other son Beau have entered into a romantic relationship. While the relationship has received public support from Joe and the rest of the family, that coming out during a presidential campaign also might not have been the best thing for the Biden clan. Whatever the reason, we’ll never know what could have been should Biden have jumped into the race a year ago.
(via Variety)