Why Biden Would Be a Serious Contender

The Times report that Vice-President Joe Biden is seriously considering entering the 2016 Presidential race isn’t exactly news. He’s been mulling such a move for at least a couple of years. “It’s as likely I run as I don’t run,” Biden said on the talk show “The View” in February, 2014. In an interview with Politico’s Glenn Thrush that month, he laid out the sort of campaign he could conduct, focussing on rising inequality and the wage squeeze. “It’s either going to be me or someone else who is going to make this argument in the Democratic Party.” As I wrote at the time, “He’s still full of energy, he’s served President Obama loyally, he loves the game, and he thinks—pundits and pollsters be damned—that this might be the moment for an old-school, shit-kicking, hand-grasping, mouth-running, stick-up-for-the-working-stiff pol like himself.”