Former Vice President Joe Biden couldn't possibly sound more like he's running for president without literally uttering the words "I'm running for president."
At the University of Montana on Monday night, Biden said he believes he is "the most qualified person in the country to be president" because "the issues that we face as a country today are the issues that have been in my wheelhouse, that I've worked on my whole life," reports CNN.
Biden went on to say that even his critics would "acknowledge" that he knows "a great deal" about the problems plaguing the nation, especially "relating to the plight of the middle class and our foreign policy."
That might all sound like Biden is just seconds away from announcing his 2020 bid, but he stopped short of doing so, saying he has to make the decision with his family and that he'll do so in the next few weeks. "We've got to figure out whether or not this is something we can all do as a family," he said.
When a moderator raised some of the potential concerns about Biden running, including that he would be 78 years old when he took the oath of office and that he's a "gaffe machine," Biden said "none" of these potential liabilities concerns him. "I'm ready to litigate all those things," he said. "The question is what kind of nation are we becoming? What are we going to do? Who are we?"
With talk like this from Biden, who currently leads in 2020 Democratic primary polls, don't bet against seeing him throw his hat in the ring. Brendan Morrow
2020 Democrats should take these political pros' advice with a grain of salt.
After all, Danny Diaz, Beth Hansen, Jeff Roe, and Terry Sullivan's candidates — Jeb Bush, John Kasich, Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas), and Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.), respectively — didn't do so well in the 2016 presidential elections. Still, they met up with Politico to share how Wednesday and Thursday nights' debaters can avoid a similar fate.
To start, Politico asked the former campaigners how they felt when their candidates went into the first 2016 debates. That quickly pivoted into their expectations for the Democratic debates, where Roe of Cruz's campaign said a candidate would "be smart" to "have a moment against [Joe] Biden." "If they want to bring him all the way down, they ought to," Roe continued, saying that wasn't Cruz's strategy in the first debate, and that could be why the senator almost didn't make the second.
When it came to discussing which Democrat would be facing the most pressure in the first debates, the Republican campaigners were generally in agreement. Sullivan, of Rubio's campaign, said it was Pete Buttigieg and Beto O'Rourke because "those two are the most a creation of the media" and "if they can't meet expectations, it's the end of them." Biden, meanwhile, could "crap the bed" and still make future debates, Sullivan continued.
Hansen, who ran Kasich's campaign, suggested Sen. Kamala Harris (D-Calif.) would see the most pressure because she's one of the "people who voters don't know a lot about." And Diaz, of Bush's campaign, similarly thinks it's "the people who are worried about making it through the summer and being on the stage in the fall."
Find all the GOP campaign runners' advice at Politico. Kathryn Krawczyk