Vice President Joe Biden told ABC News on Tuesday that while he would have made for the “best president,” he was not able to devote himself to a campaign after the death of his son, Beau Biden.
“I had planned on running. It’s an awful thing to say. I think I would have been the best president. But it was the right thing, not just for my family, for me,” Biden told ABC’s “Good Morning America” in an interview that aired on Wednesday. “No one should ever seek the presidency unless they’re able to devote their whole heart and soul and passion into just doing that. And Beau was my soul. I just wasn’t ready to be able to do that.”
So he was going to run until Beau died last summer. Wow. That makes me wonder how the primary would have turned out in hindsight. Joe Biden running would have damaged the prospects of Bernie Sanders, not Clinton. Bernie has benefited in this campaign as being the only option for opposition to Hillary. If there are two options, including a populist Joe Biden (which is probably the kind of campaign he would have run), Biden would have sucked a lot of oxygen out of the Sanders campaign.
Sure, Sanders would still mount a successful and strong campaign. Think a longer and more successful Dean campaign. And Biden would have been more competitive with Clinton in the Northeast and Midwest. In the end though, Hillary probably still wins, and probably earlier and more decisively too. Because Biden would divide the opposition, which less delegates for each, and more for Clinton. The question that can’t be answered is how many Hillary supporters would become Biden supporters. I don’t know if we’ll ever know that. As a Hillary supporter, I am torn. I probably would want to see Hillary win, but I would have voted for Joe in the Delaware primary.