Joe Biden said Friday that he would have won if he had run in the 2016 election and that he regrets not being president, according to a local news report.
“Although it would have been a very difficult primary, I think I could have won,” the 74-year-old former vice president told a crowd during a lecture at Colgate University, according to the Utica Observer-Dispatch.
His son’s illness kept him out of the race, Biden said, but otherwise, he had been preparing to run and had data suggesting that he would have won the general election as a Democrat.
Although Democrats had speculated in mid-2015 that Biden might enter the race as Hillary Clinton struggled to separate herself from her primary opponents, he announced in October that he wouldn’t seek the presidency and that his window of opportunity had passed.
Both Biden and Clinton were active this past week in politics. Biden rallied with House Democrats on Capitol Hill against Republicans’ doomed healthcare legislation, while Clinton generated opposition to the bill through social media.
