Biden's daughter says he's mulling a 2020 run for president

pulse

September 10, 2017 8:33 AM

Ashley Biden, the former vice president's daughter, said that her father is considering a run for president in 2020, confirming months of speculation.

In an interview with Women's Wear Daily, Ashley, a fashion designer, said she hopes her father, Joe Biden, will launch a 2020 bid, but that he hasn't yet made a decision, in part because he's still dealing with the loss of his 46-year-old son, Beau, to brain cancer in 2015.

"Right now, his focus is on the [Biden] Foundation and Cancer Moonshot, as well as getting other Democrats elected," Ashley said. "He's not there. He's taking it day by day after the loss of my dear beloved brother."

"He'll make a decision when that time comes," Ashley continued. "A lot can happen in four years and we know this as a family. If he is in good health, knock on wood, and seeing what the landscape is at the time, yeah, I think he is considering it."

Biden, a former senator from Delaware who ran for president in 1987 and 2007, has spoken openly about regretting his decision not to run in 2016.

"I had planned on running for president and although it would have been a very difficult primary, I think I could have won," he said in March. "I don’t know, maybe not. But I thought I could have won."

He went on, "I had a lot of data and I was fairly confident that if I were the Democratic Party's nominee, I had a better-than-ever chance of being president ... But do I regret not being president? Yes. I was the best qualified."

Biden has repeatedly denied laying the groundwork for a 2020 run.

"I don't plan on running, but everybody says because I won't commit that I will not run under any circumstances, that means I'm running," he said at a conference in San Diego in early May. "I'm doing nothing to run. I really mean this."

But just one month later Biden unveiled a new political action committee, the "American Possibilities" PAC, a platform for him to raise funds and campaign for Democrats ahead of the midterm elections. Leading the PAC is Greg Schultz, a former White House aide and veteran of President Barack Obama's presidential campaigns.

And Biden's family seems to be ready for another try. Former second lady Jill Biden said in June that her husband "is not going away."

Biden will be 77 in 2020, making him almost as old as another potential Democratic frontrunner, Sen. Bernie Sanders, who will be 79 during the next presidential election year.

Ashley said that while her father "is more vivacious and has more energy in his 70s than I do in my 30s," she added that one more term in the White House might be enough.

"But I only tell him four years — I’m like, 'Listen, this is the deal. If you do it, four years and then we're out,'" she said.

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