An emotional Vice President Joe Biden said he had planned to run for the Democratic nomination against Hillary Clinton but couldn’t because when his son died, “a part of my soul was gone.”
Biden told a crowd gathered at a Council on Foreign Relations event that he was planning to run for president a year before the presidential primary process began in earnest.
Shortly thereafter his son, Beau, was diagnosed with cancer and basically given a death sentence, he recalled. After he passed, Biden said with a long pause, “part of my soul was gone” and I didn’t feel “healthy enough” to tackle the all-consuming role of running for president.
“When he passed, excuse me… part of my soul was gone, and no woman or man should ever run for president unless they are capable and willing to give every ounce of energy to the endeavor,” he said. “And I just wasn’t.”
Although he allowed his staff to put together plans if he changed his mind, he finally concluded that “I wasn’t sort of, can I say, healthy enough to pour my whole heart and soul into the endeavor.”
He said his family actually encouraged him to run because it would give him a new “purpose” after Beau’s death.
“But I can’t blame it on my family,” he said. “I just didn’t feel like I was ready, and that’s why I’m working so hard to see that Hillary gets elected.”
