On October 21st, Vice President Joe Biden announced he will not be running for President in 2016. Biden made an announcement from the White House Rose Garden alongside both his wife, Jill, and President Obama. 

“Unfortunately, I believe we’re out of time. The time necessary to mount a winning campaign for the nomination,” Biden stated. The VP had unsuccessfully run for the office in 1988 and 2008 and dropped out of the race for the Democratic nominee in 2004. 

Biden would have started his campaigning race well behind Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders, who have been running full-steam for the past few months. If Biden were to run, he would have made the decision of nominating a Democratic candidate a difficult one. But by not running for President, Biden has made the rivalry between Sanders and Clinton rather exciting. In a poll taken in Iowa on October 23, the results showed that Clinton had 51% of the vote with Sanders trailing at 40%. This was the result of Clinton’s successful debate. 

In his announcement, he also addressed the passing of his son Beau. Beau Biden died on May 30 of brain cancer. He said that he would have liked to have been “the President that ended cancer.”  Biden proceeded to explain that in a time of such grief he would feel uncomfortable executing a campaign for the presidency. “While I will not be a candidate, I will not be silent,” Biden 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.”

He plans to influence Washington’s decisions on the middle class, college education, justice, and equality. He said that the “very soul” of the country was the ability to be or do anything. He concluded his statement enthusiastically: ”I am absolutely certain we are fully capable of accomplishing extraordinary things. We can do this, and when we do…America won’t just win the future, we will own the finish line.”