As Vice President Joe Biden announced he would not run for president, he also promised the American people that his work wasn’t finished yet. What will he do next?
“But while I will not be a candidate, I will not be silent,” Biden vowed from the rose garden. “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.”
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With fifteen more months left in his vice presidency, Biden has time to advocate for the middle class, public education, limiting money in politics, ending economic inequality and furthering cancer research. The lofty goals might take longer than the rest of his term.
“There’s another reason Biden may be doing this, and that’s to increase his leverage in a post-Obama world,” a former Biden and Clinton staffer told the Washington Examiner. “He’s a very vocal guy. Would I be shocked if Hillary Clinton asked him to be Secretary of State and he said yes? No.”
During a forum with Walter Mondale on Tuesday, Biden spoke of his love of foreign policy and how he saw his role as being similar to the secretary of state. He joked that the only reason he didn’t take the latter job was that his wife Jill wanted to live in the vice president’s residency.
Biden has had higher political ambitions for years now, beginning with his first run for the nomination in 1988. In his 2008 memoir he said that he overcame his campaign fears because “I can picture myself sitting in the Oval Office.” With two prior attempts at the under his belt, its clear the only reason he took a pass was timing.
“The process doesn’t respect or much care about things like filing deadlines or debates and primaries and caucuses,” Biden said. “But I also know I could do this … ”
The vice president’s decision followed a solid two weeks for Clinton on the campaign trail. After a strong performance in the first Democratic debate in Las Vegas, Clinton further solidified her base while Biden continued to deliberate.
After the debate, Clinton campaign surrogates John Podesta and Jen Palmieri both said that they didn’t see room in the primary for Biden Now that he has chosen to refrain from running, the Democratic front-runner applauded his decision, calling Biden a “good man and a great Vice President” with a record she would like to “defend and build on.”
She added, “And I am confident that history isn’t finished with Joe Biden…And if I know Joe, he will always be on the front-lines, always fighting for all of us.”
