People around Joe Biden are increasingly convinced he’ll run for president — and Thursday, he took the next step forward, using his appearance at a union rally here to unveil what for all intents and purposes would be his 2016 stump speech.
In and around the vice president’s office, planning and outreach for the expected run is intensely underway, creating an energy that looks to those close to it like a campaign taking shape. They’re talking to donors, they’re connecting with old supporters, they’re starting to think about potential campaign staff hires, according to people familiar with the activity.
The vice president’s small staff has been struggling to keep up with the demands of the sudden attention on him, whether that’s planning events or staffing them, or dealing with the media frenzy that’s intensified every day for Biden since he started more actively exploring a run while on vacation in South Carolina last month.
Biden’s top advisers are also starting to tackle the reality that contributed to his 2008 run being such a flop: Biden’s four decades being the king of Delaware gave him relatable roots to talk up, but never required him to build much of a political network or get particularly good with donors (or get to know too many of them). They know that they’ll have to bring new people on board very quickly to rapidly change up their entire operation, with an emphasis on political experience more recent than the 1990s.
Still, Biden hasn’t made final a decision, and people familiar with his thinking say they wouldn’t be shocked if he lands on no. What he says in private is similar to what he says in public—things like, “I don’t know if I’ve got enough good days to outweigh the bad days.”
But the reasons to run appear to be piling up in his mind.
Despite the many doubts he expressed in his Thursday interview with Stephen Colbert, Biden made more people watching him closely believe that he’ll get himself to yes when he told the Late Show host, “You’ve got to get up. And I feel like I was letting down Beau, letting down my parents, letting down my family if I didn't just get up.”
The raw emotion and honesty he displayed throughout that appearance also got pro-Biden hearts racing. It’s exactly why they think he’d win if he got into the race.