WASHINGTON, D.C. — U.S. Vice President Joseph Biden has made it official: he will not be a candidate for president in 2016. Biden announced on Wednesday, October 21, 2015, that he would not seek the Democratic nomination for president, ending many months of speculation over whether he would enter the race.
After over three decades serving as an elected official, Biden, 72, appeared in the White House Rose Garden with his wife Jill and President Barack Obama Wednesday to announce that he believed the "window had closed" for mounting a successful campaign.
Biden had publicly wrestled with the decision over whether or not to throw his hat into the race, telling the media that he simply wasn't sure his family was ready for a grueling campaign following the loss of his son Beau, who died in May of brain cancer.
"While I will not be a candidate, I will not be silent," said Biden as he announced his decision. "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."
At the age of 30, which is the minimum age required to hold the office, Joe Biden became the sixth youngest senator in U.S. history after winning election to represent the state of Delaware. Biden ran for the 1988 Democratic presidential nomination, but was defeated by eventual nominee Michael Dukakis, who went on to lose the election in a landslide to incumbent Republican President Ronald Reagan.
He again ran for president in 2008, before dropping out and accepting Barack Obama's invitation to run with him as vice president, an office Biden has held since 2009.
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