Biden reportedly said he wouldn't be running if Mitt Romney was president

(Image credit: Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images)

published 28 January 2020

Former Vice President Joe Biden isn't bashful about the reason he's running for president.

Biden, though not bereft of policy plans, isn't leading a specific "movement" like some of his Democratic competitors, namely Sens. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) and Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.). In that sense, there doesn't appear to have been an ideological motivation that spurred the 77-year-old's decision to jump into the crowded Democratic primary last year, except for defeating the incumbent, President Trump, The New York Times reports.

In fact, Biden reportedly told the Times while campaigning in Iowa before the state's caucus kicks off the election process next week that he likely wouldn't even have launched a campaign if someone like Sen. Mitt Romney (R-Utah) was the one seeking re-election, amplifying Biden's message that Democrats and Republicans need not be in a state of "perpetual war" in a post-Trump America. It's Trump, and Trump alone, that compelled former President Barack Obama's right hand man to take one last crack at the Oval Office. Read more at The New York Times.

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Tim is a staff writer at The Week and has contributed to Bedford and Bowery and The New York Transatlantic. He is a graduate of Occidental College and NYU's journalism school. Tim enjoys writing about baseball, Europe, and extinct megafauna. He lives in New York City.