Flanked by Obama, Joe Biden declares he will not be a candidate for President in 2016

Vice Pres­i­dent Joe Biden has announced that he will not be a can­di­date for the Demo­c­ra­t­ic nom­i­na­tion for Pres­i­dent of the Unit­ed States next year, say­ing that he did not see a path for­ward for a cam­paign after con­sul­ta­tions with his family.

Flanked by Pres­i­dent Oba­ma and the Sec­ond Lady, his wife Jill Biden, the Vice Pres­i­dent made his deci­sion known in the Rose Gar­den in live tele­vised remarks also wit­nessed by the White House press corps.

The mass media has been beck­on­ing Biden to get into the race for weeks, gen­er­at­ing sto­ry after sto­ry spec­u­lat­ing on a Biden bid.

But today, the Vice Pres­i­dent put an end to the rumor and intrigue by stat­ing the obvi­ous: his win­dow of oppor­tu­ni­ty has closed. Had he launched a cam­paign late last year, or ear­ly this year, he could have been a con­tender. But he chose not to. Grant­ed, his son Beau was in ill health and passed away a few months ago. No one should blame Biden for putting his fam­i­ly ahead of polit­i­cal considerations.

In a pos­si­ble fore­shad­ow­ing of his announce­ment today, Biden remarked yes­ter­day that he did not per­ceive Repub­li­cans as an ene­my, and that that he was a Dick Cheney fan. “I actu­al­ly like Dick Cheney, for real,” Biden said at an event hon­or­ing Wal­ter Mon­dale. “I get on with him. I think he’s a decent man.”

Most Democ­rats and pro­gres­sives would sharply dis­agree with that state­ment. We our­selves con­sid­er Cheney one of the worst and most manip­u­la­tive peo­ple ever to have held the office Biden holds now. We’d like to see Cheney and oth­er Bush admin­is­tra­tion fig­ures pros­e­cut­ed for war crimes. They have not been held account­able by this admin­is­tra­tion, which is a great shame.

Biden also said, at the same event, “It’s most impor­tant that every­one in this room under­stand the oth­er team is not the ene­my… End this notion that it is naive to think we can speak well of the oth­er par­ty and cooperation.”

That’s a fine sen­ti­ment, but it is unfor­tu­nate­ly not shared by most Repub­li­cans, who view Democ­rats as an ene­my that needs to be defeat­ed elec­toral­ly and leg­isla­tive­ly. If Repub­li­cans were tru­ly inter­est­ed in gov­ern­ing, they’d take the threat of a fed­er­al gov­ern­ment shut­down off the table. But they won’t.

The Obama/Biden admin­is­tra­tion has got­ten into trou­ble try­ing to appease Repub­li­cans in the past, notably in the sum­mer of 2011, when the Pres­i­dent agreed to a fool­ish bar­gain to raise the debt ceil­ing and trig­ger large auto­mat­ic cuts (seques­tra­tion) in vital pub­lic ser­vices if a con­gres­sion­al “super­com­mit­tee” could not agree on its own harm­ful aus­ter­i­ty plan by a pre­scribed date.

Biden may not care for Clin­ton’s com­bat­ive­ness, but a fight­er is arguably what the Demo­c­ra­t­ic Par­ty needs at this junc­ture, to deal with a Repub­li­can Par­ty that likes to man­u­fac­ture end­less fis­cal crises and play games of chicken.

Biden announced his deci­sion a day after Vir­ginia Sen­a­tor Jim Webb end­ed his invis­i­ble cam­paign for the Demo­c­ra­t­ic nom­i­na­tion, hav­ing con­clud­ed (cor­rect­ly) that he was not get­ting any trac­tion. That leaves five can­di­dates in the field: Hillary Clin­ton, Bernie Sanders, Mar­tin O’Mal­ley, Lin­coln Chafee, and Lar­ry Lessig.