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.
WASHINGTON — Vice President Biden really made two announcements on Wednesday: The window for him to run for president has closed. His vice presidency has not.
"While I will not be a candidate, I will not be silent," Biden said in the White House Rose Garden, with his wife and the president by his side.
Biden then proceeded to give a full-throated defense of the Obama record — what might have even been viewed as a campaign speech if his decision had been different. In a thinly veiled aside to former secretary of State Hillary Clinton, Biden urged Democrats to run on Obama's legacy.
"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. ... 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.
"We're making a tragic mistake if we walk away from, or try to undo, the Obama legacy," he said.
It's a legacy that Biden would have been inexorably tied to had he decided to run. While Clinton can oppose Obama's trade proposals and Syria policy, a Biden campaign would have had no such room to navigate.
Having finally decided at age 72 that he'll never have a presidential legacy of his own, Biden's mark on history will forever be tied to that of a president a generation younger than he is. More than any other candidate, he would have had to run for a third term of Obama's presidency. It would have been almost impossible to imagine a fourth.
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