"Vice President Joe Biden may be getting ready to run for
president. Or maybe not. At the very least,
long-standing Clinton-hater Maureen Dowd has pushed political observers to start speculating again. The New York Times columnist
pulled at the heartstrings in her column this weekend, saying Biden’s
son Beau Biden told his dad to run shortly before his death in May. Now
several news outlets, including both the NYT and the AP,
published articles speculating about whether the vice-president was
getting ready to try to become the oldest president ever elected to a
first term.
Biden’s staff has been reaching out to Democratic leaders
and donors to hold “hushed phone calls and quiet lunches” weighing a
potential run, reports the Times. Many say the vice-president
is being pushed by the memory of his 46-year-old son wanting him to run.
“He was so close to Beau and it was so heartbreaking that, frankly, I
thought initially he wouldn’t have the heart,” the supporter, Michael
Thornton, a Boston lawyer, tells the Times. “But I’ve had indications that maybe he does want to — and ‘that’s what Beau would have wanted me to do.’”
Dowd wrote in her column that Beau “tried to make his father
promise to run, arguing that the White House should not revert to the
Clintons and that the country would be better off with Biden values.”
Biden’s other son, Hunter, also apparently told him to run, saying,
“Dad, it’s who you are.” Slate
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