Joe Biden isn’t so much dipping his toes into the 2020 presidential pool as he’s wading around in the shallow end and splashing everyone with a foam noodle.
The former vice president, who is on tour this week to promote his new book, Promise Me, Dad, continues to feel out his White House prospects, and there’s nothing at all subtle about it.
“Look I can tell you honestly, if the Lord Almighty came down, sat in the middle of the table and said ‘Joe, the nomination is yours but you got to take it now,’ I would say no,” Biden said Monday during an appearance on the Today show.
However, he added in practically the same breath, “I honest to God haven’t made my mind up about [running in 2020] yet. Right now I want to focus on the book and I want to focus on the off-year elections.”
NBC’s Savannah Guthrie pressed Biden, asking, “But you’re not closing the door?”
“No, I’m not closing the door. I’ve been around too long, and I’m a great respecter of fate, but who knows what the situation is going to be a year-and-a-half from now,” the former vice president added.
Will he or won’t he? The excitement is killing us.
This is hardly the first time since leaving the White House that the former vice president has titillated reporters by floating the idea he may seek the White House in 2020.
In an interview this month with Oprah Winfrey, for example, Biden said in reference to not running last year, “I regret that I am not president because I think there is so much opportunity.”
He added elsewhere in a separate interview with Snapchat’s “Good Luck America,” which is set to be released this Tuesday, that he’d consider running in 2020 if “no one steps up.”
However, he added in that same interview, “I’m not doing anything to run. I’m not taking names, I’m not raising money, I’m not talking to anybody, but something’s got to happen.”
When will he make up his mind? Tune in next week to find out!
It’s worth noting that Biden’s maybe/maybe not White House teasing coincides with his very public criticism of Hillary Clinton’s botched 2016 campaign.
“[S]he did not evince much joy at the prospect of running,” Biden writes in his new book. “I may have misread [Clinton] that morning, but she seemed to me like a person propelled by forces not entirely of her own making.”
He claimed in his separate interview with Oprah that he knew before Election Day that the Clinton team had blown it.
“I did 83 events [during the election]. A month out, I came back and said, ‘We’re going to lose this election,'” he said.
“I’ll bet you can’t find 10 friends who could tell you what Hillary’s position was on child care,” he added. “Not generically, specifically. How we’re going to have free college education, how it’s going to be paid for. All the things that matter to those people.”
Biden also criticized Clinton for focusing on “identity politics,” claiming it was one of the many reasons she lost.
Then there was the time in May when he said straight-up, “I never thought she was a great candidate. I thought I was a great candidate.”
He apparently isn’t alone in that estimation. Former DNC interim chairwoman Donna Brazile alleged this month that she considered replacing Clinton with Biden last year after a much-publicized fainting spell in New York City.
Should he run in 2020, Biden told Vanity Fair last month, he would differentiate himself from Clinton by running as a joyful candidate.
“I never got the sense that there was any joy in her campaign. Maybe it’s me, but I find joy in doing this,” he said.
And just for good measure, Biden threw in an I-may-or-may-not-run in 2020 wink-wink.
“I haven’t decided to run, but I’ve decided I’m not going to decide not to run,” he told Vanity Fair. “We’ll see what happens.”
We get it, we get it. You’re keeping your options open, but you don’t want to appear too eager. Smart play, but not that subtle.
