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[h=4]Joe Biden says no to 2016 presidential race[/h]Vice President Biden announced he will not run for president, ending months of speculation.
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Vice President Joe Biden will not go head to head with Hillary Clinton to seek the 2016 democratic nomination for president. He said too many logistical challenges remain just months before votes are cast.
Vice President Biden, flanked by President Obama and his wife, Jill, speaks in the Rose Garden at the White House on Oct. 21, 2015.(Photo: Jim Watson, AFP/Getty Images)
WASHINGTON — Vice President<span style="color: Red;">*</span>Biden announced Wednesday<span style="color: Red;">*</span>he will not run for president, ending months of speculation about his political future.
Biden, a former U.S.senator,<span style="color: Red;">*</span>sought the Democratic presidential nomination<span style="color: Red;">*</span>in 1988 and 2008.
"I've concluded it has closed," Biden said of the window to jump in the race.
Biden, 72, has been grieving and weighing family needs since his 46-year-old son Beau, Delaware’s former attorney general, died of brain cancer on May 30. Reports that Beau, in his final days, urged his father to run for president stoked national speculation again about a possible bid.
Biden said Wednesday he knew the window for announcing a presidential bid might close as his family worked through a grieving process that "doesn't respect or much care about things like filing deadlines or debates and primaries and caucuses." He said he and his family have reached the point where thinking of Beau "brings a smile" before tears.
"Beau is our inspiration," he said. "Unfortunately, I believe we're out of time, the time necessary to mount a winning campaign for the nomination. But 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.”
ONPOLITICS
Six things to know about Joe Biden
Biden spoke from the Rose Garden as President Obama and Biden's wife,<span style="color: Red;">*</span>Jill, looked on. He urged Democrats to build on the successes of the Obama administration in the coming presidential campaign.
“This party, our nation, will be making a tragic mistake if we walk away or attempt to undo the Obama legacy,” he said.<span style="color: Red;">*</span>“Democrats should not only defend this record and protect this record, they should run on the record.”
Biden listed priorities including rebuilding the middle class, campaign finance reform, and a tripling of the child tax care credit, paid for by limiting deductions in the tax code to 28 percent of income.
He said the country needs “a moon shot” to cure cancer and vowed to spend his next 15 months in office fighting for increased funding for research and development.
“If I could be anything, I would have wanted to have been the president that ended cancer, because it’s possible,” he said.
To the delight of progressives, Biden joined the call for debt-free college, saying “we need to commit to 16 years of free public education for all of our children.”
But he also called for an end to “divisive partisan politics” that he said has gone on too long, repeating a statement he made on Tuesday that could be perceived as a dig at Democratic presidential<span style="color: Red;">*</span>front-runner Hillary Clinton. During the first Democratic debate on Oct. 13, Clinton listed Republicans among the enemies she’s most proud of making.
“I don’t think we should look at Republicans as our enemies,” Biden said. “And for the sake of the country, we have to work together.”
Reince Priebus, Republican National Committee chairman, called Biden’s decision a “major blow” for Democrats, saying Biden was “the most formidable general election candidate the Democrat Party could have fielded, and his decision not to challenge Hillary Clinton greatly improves our chances of taking back the White House.”
Rumors had swirled about what Biden would do.<span style="color: Red;">*</span>Supporters said before Wednesday<span style="color: Red;">*</span>it would be understandable if he decided to sit out the 2016 race.
“No one would blame him if he said, ‘You know, look, it’s just too much,’” supporter Dick Harpootlian, former chairman of South Carolina’s Democratic Party, said in June.
USA TODAY
With presidential ambitions ended, Biden's legacy now forever tied to Obama
Biden represented Delaware in the Senate for 36 years, beginning in 1973. He took his first oath of office next to Beau Biden’s hospital bed about a month after a car accident that killed his first wife, Neilia, and their 13-month-old daughter. The accident injured Beau Biden and his brother, Hunter.
“He's the luckiest person I've known, and the unluckiest person I've known," said former senator Ted Kaufman, Biden’s former chief of staff in the Senate, after Beau’s death. "He says it all the time, 'There are people who have had worse experiences than I have.' But I don't know any of them."
The Draft Biden super PAC, launched by former Biden staffers and campaign veterans, had hired staff in early voting states and raised funds for independent expenditures in support of his possible candidacy. The group<span style="color: Red;">*</span>recently<span style="color: Red;">*</span>released its first<span style="color: Red;">*</span>national TV ad, focused on his ability to overcome personal tragedy,<span style="color: Red;">*</span>to media outlets. But they decided not to air it after a report that Biden did not want the emotional video<span style="color: Red;">*</span>to run.
"We are so grateful for the gigantic outpouring of support from hundreds of thousands of Americans around the country in our effort to encourage the Vice President to run," Will Pierce, Executive Director of Draft Biden 2016, said in a statement. "While the Vice President has decided not to run, we know that over the next year he will stand up for all Americans and articulate a vision for America's future that will leave no one behind."
Biden would have faced organizational challenges had he decided to enter the presidential race this late. Armies of volunteers and staff already are helping Clinton, the<span style="color: Red;">*</span>former secretary of state,<span style="color: Red;">*</span>and other candidates in early primary states.
Biden’s candidacy presumably would have taken away some support from Clinton, whose supporters are ideologically similar to his. Recent polls showed support declining for Clinton as it increased for Biden. A Real Clear Politics average of recent national polls showed 47.8% support for Clinton, 16.8% support for Biden and 25.7% support for Sen. Bernie Sanders of Vermont, an<span style="color: Red;">*</span>independent and self-described democratic socialist also running for the Democratic nomination.
Clinton tweeted that Biden "is a good friend and a great man. Today and always, inspired by his optimism and commitment to change the world for the better."
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Joe Biden has run for President twice before. Here are a few interesting facts about the vice president and former U.S. senator. VPC
Sanders, in a statement, called Biden a "good friend" and thanked him for his lifetime of public service.
"I look forward to continuing to work with him to address the major crises we face," Sanders said. "He understands the need to rebuild the middle class; and to address income and wealth inequality, a corrupt campaign finance system, climate change, racial justice, immigration reform and the need for publicly-funded higher education.”
ONPOLITICS
Candidates say farewell to the Joe Biden candidacy that wasn't
Before becoming vice president, Biden served stints as chairman of the Senate Judiciary and Foreign Relations committees. He has been an unusually active vice president, partly because of his long-standing relationships with lawmakers on Capitol Hill.
He has negotiated down-to-the-wire agreements on fiscal issues, including proposals to extend the Bush-era tax cuts, legislation to increase the nation’s borrowing limit, and a strategy for avoiding the “fiscal cliff” of spending cuts and tax increases in 2013.
Biden was dubbed “Sheriff Joe” for his oversight of the 2009 economic stimulus program and he oversaw the draw-down of troops in Iraq in 2010. More recently, the White House tapped Biden to lobby members of Congress to support the nuclear agreement with Iran.
Biden withdrew from the 2008 Democratic presidential primary race after a poor showing in the Iowa caucuses. He dropped out of the 1988 race amid reports he had plagiarized a portion of a speech that he said he had forgotten to attribute.
G. Terry Madonna, director of the Center for Politics and Public Affairs at Franklin and Marshall College in Pennsylvania, said he expects Biden to write his memoirs now that the presidential campaign question is behind him. And Biden still could put his decades of experience at speechmaking to work.
“He’ll be very popular on the lecture tour. I don’t think there’s any doubt about that,” Madonna said.
Follow<span style="color: Red;">*</span>@ngaudiano<span style="color: Red;">*</span>on Twitter.
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