Biden finally kills hope for White House run

Vice President Joe Biden announced today he will not seek the Democratic nomination for president in 2016.

Biden said his focus in recent months has been on his family’s grief over the death of his son, Beau Biden, from brain cancer earlier this year, leaving too little time for him to mount a successful campaign.

“There’s no timetable for this process,” he said. “The process doesn’t respect or much care about things like filing deadlines or debates or primaries or caucuses.”

Before his death in May, Beau Biden served as Delaware’s attorney general and planned to run for governor in 2016. President Barack Obama gave the eulogy at his funeral and showed reverence and respect for the Biden family’s closeness. Beau Biden and his brother, Hunter, survived a car accident in 1972 that killed Biden’s daughter and first wife.

“But Beau was a Biden,” President Barack Obama said in his eulogy. “And he learned early the Biden family rule: If you have to ask for help, it’s too late. It meant you were never alone; you don’t even have to ask, because someone is always there for you when you need them.”

Biden’s announcement likely will disappoint some Democratic voters who wanted a stronger, more likable candidate than Hillary Clinton. Though Clinton performed well in the Oct. 13 debate against Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., and other Democratic candidates, she did not get much of a boost in the polls. Surveys by CNN and Fox News both showed Biden outperforming Clinton in hypothetical general election matchups with Republican candidates.

Biden, who ran for president in 1988 and again in 2008, promised to remain a vocal influence in the Democratic Party despite staying out of the race. He called for measures to give government support to the middle class and to spend more resources in the fight against cancer.

“I will not be silent,” he said. “I intend to speak out clearly and forcefully to influence as much as I can where we stand as a party and where we need to go as a nation.”