Former Vice President Joe Biden’s youngest brother believes the third time’s the charm for his older sibling to win the White House.
Frank Biden, 65, told the Palm Beach Post on Monday he expected his 76-year-old brother to mount a third bid for the Oval Office, adding the time was ripe given his ability to woo “disaffected” Democratic voters and successfully challenge President Trump in 2020.
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“I think we’re going to run,” Frank Biden, a local resident, told the newspaper. “You can say that ‘Frank thinks his brother’s going to run.’ Now, he could surprise me. But I know the family’s behind him 100 percent.”
“The decision the party has to make is almost an existential one … Are we going to go with someone that everyone implicitly trusts, has confidence in, and no one doubts Joe’s ability to do the job?” the younger Biden said. “Who do you think that the disaffected Republicans and the disaffected Democrats that we need to win over to win Pennsylvania, to win Michigan, to win Wisconsin, to win Ohio, to win Florida — as a strictly Machiavellian question, who is best positioned to win those folks back?”
[Related: Joe Biden pitched himself as only Democrat who can do ‘what has to be done’ to beat Trump: Report]
This isn’t the first time Frank Biden, a former charter schools executive, has publicly implored his brother to contest the presidency ahead of the next election cycle. In 2017, he told SiriusXM host Michael Smerconish the six-term senator from Delaware “absolutely” has another tilt at the Democratic presidential nomination left in him, having previously vied to be the party’s standard-bearer in 1988 and 2008.
Joe Biden’s brother’s comments come on the heels of multiple reports he will publicly announce in the coming weeks whether he will run again in 2020. He bowed out of contention in 2015 after the death of his son Beau Biden, 46, from a brain tumor. Frank Biden said his brother was “healing up really well.”
“Joe is in a place spiritually. What he’s been through and how he’s come out the other side, he has become enormously empathetic. He’s always been an empath. But he’s so empathetic toward people who are hurting. He doesn’t think his tragedy is exclusive to him, that somehow he’s Job. This is an everyman deal,” Frank Biden said.
