22 October 2015
Stop Press: Joe Biden Hits the Lawn
by J R Thomas
We have been following the American Presidential nomination battles in the Shaw Sheet and speculating that Joe Biden, President Obama’s Vice President, might considerably impact Hilary Clinton’s front runner role for the Democrat nomination, should he decide to run. On Wednesday afternoon Biden announced, on the White House lawn, and with the President by his side, that he would not be a candidate, for family reasons – his son died recently – and because of the amount of work that he and the President have to do in the next fifteen months. That would seem to leave Hilary with a fairly easy ride to a coronation at the Philadelphia convention next year. Unless, in this time of voter rebelliousness, a Corbyn halo descends on Bernie Sanders – it is likely that more prospective Biden voters will opt for Bernie rather than Hilary.
Biden has been openly pondering whether to run, and seemed recently to be building a national network to do so. But his family loss, and perhaps his age (he is 72) may have decided him not to do so. His announcement did not throw his support either way; and to a cynical observer, does ever so slightly leave the possibility of him being dragged into the ring at later date. “While I will not be a candidate, I will not be silent,” Biden said, saying that all candidates should run on President Obama’s record.
