LIKE bungee-jumping or pregnancy, running for president of the United States is not something you can do by halves. The schedule is unimaginably gruelling, the toll on the candidate and his or her family immense—and that is just the primaries. So Joe Biden’s prevarication about joining the Democratic race always made it unlikely that he would, notwithstanding his occasional flashes of ankle. In the Rose Garden of the White House on October 21st, with Barack Obama at his side, the vice-president confirmed what his indecision had always implied: despite some indications that he was planning to, he would not launch a third bid for the top job.
That came after yet another flurry of interest in his putative candidacy, this one sparked when he refined his position on the raid that killed Osama bin Laden in 2011—claiming not, in fact, to have opposed it, thereby burnishing his national-security credentials. In his announcement, Mr Biden referred to the death of his son, Beau, in May; in previous, sometimes moving comments, his grief, and the fragility of his family, were the reasons he gave for his uncertainty about running. Now, he said, his family was “ready” for the challenge. But, Mr Biden had concluded, the window for “mounting a realistic campaign” has closed. “Unfortunately,” he said, “I believe we’re out of time.”
Bye-bye Biden: The Biden effect on the Democratic presidential hopefuls
He may well be right. Hillary Clinton has already sewn up key donors and endorsements from many Democratic bigwigs; her assured performance in her party’s first televised debate on October 13th persuaded some waverers of the strength and inevitability of her candidacy. Talk by Mr Biden’s boosters of his superior appeal to ethnic minorities, particularly in the South, may anyway have been overblown. Quite probably, had he run, he would have succeeded in hurting Mrs Clinton—the barbs and tension between them seemed already to be mounting—but ultimately would have failed to win the nomination.
After Mr Biden’s official withdrawal from a contest he never officially entered, Mrs Clinton is in a formidable position: she is the party establishment’s only viable candidate. It also leaves the Democrats without an obvious backup plan, should the row over her private e-mail habits when she was secretary of state, or some other furore, fell her.
This article appeared in the United States section of the print edition under the headline "Joe says no"
