The Atlantic

Is Joe Biden Running for President? He Can't Decide.

The former vice president is angry about Trump and thinks he can do the job better than anyone else, but he’s got to make up his mind—and do it soon.
Source: Eric Thayer / Reuters

Watery eyes, clenched chins, insistent grips of his arm: They don’t just think Joe Biden should run for president, or just want him to. They tell him he has to.

It’s hard for him to tell them no. It’s hard for him to tell himself no.

Already, the timeline Biden had set appears to be shifting. He said he would decide by the beginning of 2019, but now people around him note that he, like everyone else, had been expecting the race to be moving more by now, so he may take a little more time into the year to see how the field shapes up.

[Read: Joe Biden’s endless rumination about running for president]

But the tenor of conversations with donors and supporters has intensified in recent weeks. As much as he wants to defer a decision to the Biden clan’s famous group holiday vacation, they are telling him and his small

You’re reading a preview, subscribe to read more.

More from The Atlantic

The Atlantic8 min readAmerican Government
The Return of the John Birch Society
Michael Smart chuckled as he thought back to their banishment. Truthfully he couldn’t say for sure what the problem had been, why it was that in 2012, the John Birch Society—the far-right organization historically steeped in conspiracism and oppositi
The Atlantic17 min read
How America Became Addicted to Therapy
A few months ago, as I was absent-mindedly mending a pillow, I thought, I should quit therapy. Then I quickly suppressed the heresy. Among many people I know, therapy is like regular exercise or taking vitamin D: something a sensible person does rout
The Atlantic7 min readAmerican Government
The Americans Who Need Chaos
This is Work in Progress, a newsletter about work, technology, and how to solve some of America’s biggest problems. Sign up here. Several years ago, the political scientist Michael Bang Petersen, who is based in Denmark, wanted to understand why peop

Related Books & Audiobooks