Outside the Beltway

Biden 2016?

Doug Mataconis · Monday, May 23, 2011 · 6 comments

Vice-President Biden wants Democrats to remember that he will still be around after Barack Obama is done with his second term:

Vice President Joe Biden surprised a gathering of donors in Cincinnati last week when he floated the prospect of his succeeding President Barack Obama in the White House.

Biden, who started in the Senate young and would be just 70 in 2012, raised the possibility unprompted during a wide-ranging conversation at the May 19 dinner with major Democratic Party donors, a source in the room said.

The Vice President, who has never ruled in or out running in six years, told the group he hadn’t made up his mind, and cited both political conditions and his own health as relevant factors.

But the spontaneous suggestion caught the attention of at least some in the audience, said the guest, “given he volunteered that without prompting…and given the audience.”

A crop of Democrats already appear to be eyeing the subsequent presidential contest, including New York Governor Andrew Cuomo, Maryland Governor Martin O’Malley, and Virginia Senator Mark Warner; a sitting Vice President would utterly change the circumstances in a race that is, in any event, too far off to imagine, and whose contours depend most of all on whether Obama wins re-election.

Because of his age and his health history (Biden suffered a brain anyuerism in 1988 and nearly died) many had assumed that Biden would follow Dick Cheney and decline to run for his parties nomination, and he may well end up doing that. If he runs, though, depending on the reputation of the Obama/Biden Administration at that point, he’d arguably crowd up much of the rest of a prospective Democratic field. He’d be old, but not much older than Reagan was when in ran in 1980, or John McCain was in 2008.

President Biden? Stay tuned I guess.