On Friday, former Vice President Joe Biden was at Colgate University, and while he was there, he spoke to the question everyone has been wondering since the 2016 election: Does he regret not running for president?
“The answer is that I had planned on running for president,” Biden told Colgate University president Brian W. Casey, the Washington Post reported. “Although it would have been a very difficult primary, I think I could have won. I don’t know, maybe not, but I thought I could have won. 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.”
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However, it was the illness and ultimately, the death of his son Beau that kept him from running. “I lost part of my soul,” he said.
“I don’t not regret not running in the sense that it was the right decision for my boy, for me, for my family at the time,” he later added. “But do I regret not being president? Yes. And I know that sounds, I know what it sounds like. But no man or woman announces for president of the United States unless they honestly believe from their experience they’re the best qualified person to do that.”