Joe Biden 2020? Former Vice President Says He Is Considering Presidential Run

After opting out of the presidential race in 2016, former Vice President Joe Biden told longtime foreign policy aides in a private meeting Saturday that he is open to running for the oval office in 2020.

Five people who were present at the private meeting — held for planning Biden’s 2018 agenda for the Penn Biden Center for Diplomacy and Global Engagement — told Denver Post on the condition of anonymity that the former vice president admitted he was mulling a run for president in 2020.

Biden, however, did make it amply clear that he had not made up his mind regarding the matter and was in no rush to make a final decision yet. Biden told everyone present in the room that if he indeed plans to launch a campaign for 2020 election, he would like all the attendants of the meeting to join him on his team.

However, he said, there was no obligation on any of their part. Biden told his aides if any of them wanted to opt out of supporting him as a presidential candidate or felt like they were comfortable in their non-governmental roles, they were free to do so, and he would not have any hard feelings toward them.

People who attended the meeting were left with the impression that if no major Democratic candidate emerges in the next few years, Biden would be ready to take charge of the reins and run against President Donald Trump in 2020.

Many Democrats believe that Trump would not have become the POTUS had Biden run against him in 2016 instead of former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.

His plans of running for office was dashed by the death of his eldest son, Beau, in May 2015, after which Biden announced that he needed to focus on uniting his family in the difficult time. By the time he and his family had gotten out of grieving process, he believed it was too late.

“As my family and I have worked through the grieving process, I’ve said all along what I’ve said time and again to others, that it may very well be that process, by the time we get through it, closes the window on mounting a realistic campaign for president, that it might close. I’ve concluded it has closed,” Biden told reporters in the White House Rose Garden on Oct. 2015.

One of the primary concerns that Democrats might have if Biden does decide to run in 2020 would be his age. Provided he wins the presidential race, he would be 78 by the time he takes office, although he is only a few years older than Trump.

Longtime advisers of the former vice president have discussed the possibility of Biden running for a single term.

In a recent interview with NBC News, Biden said that he had yet to decide whether running for 2020 election was “the right thing to do.” “I’m focused on one thing: electing a Democratic Congress to stop this erosion of the core of who we are,” Biden said. “I’ll look at that a year from now. I have plenty of time to consider whether or not to run.”