March 25, 2017
While giving a speech at New York's Colgate University on Friday night, former Vice President Joe Biden gave a long, heartfelt answer as to whether or not he regretted not running for president.
“I had planned on running for president and although it would have been a very difficult primary, I think I could have won,” he said during a Q&A with Brian Casey, the university's president. “Maybe not, I don’t know.”
There was much speculation in late 2015 that Biden would announce his run for the presidency, though he ultimately announced in October 2015 that he would not compete in the Democratic primaries.
“Do I regret not being president?" he said. "Yes."
Though, Biden said his decision against running came after he said he "lost a part of [his] soul" when his son Beau Biden died of brain cancer in 2015. He made the decision to be with his family instead of hitting the campaign trail.
"I didn't run because no man or woman should announce [their run] for president of the United States unless they can look the public in the eye and say, 'I promise you I'm giving 100 percent of my attention and dedication to this effort,'" he told Casey and the live audience at the university. "I knew I couldn't do that."
Biden gave the candid response after delivering a speech that focused on the middle-class Friday.
The former vice president has since been named the Benjamin Franklin Presidential Practice Professor at the University of Pennsylvania, where he'll lead the Penn Biden Center for Diplomacy and Global Engagement.
The center will be based in Washington, D.C., though Biden will have an office on the university's campus in University City.
Watch Biden's full speech here.
