US Vice-President Joe Biden, a broken man after his son’s death due to brain cancer last May, has voiced fresh doubts about entering the 2016 presidential race, despite a new push by his admirers at a time when Democratic front-runner Hillary Clinton continues to slide in polls precipitously.
In an emotional appearance Thursday night on Stephen Colbert’s “late Show” on CBS, Biden said nobody should run for president unless he or she is able to promise voters that “you have my whole heart, my whole soul, my energy, and my passion”.
“I’d be lying if I said that I knew I was there,” he said, adding, “I’m being completely honest. Nobody has a right in my view to seek that office unless they are willing to give it 110 per cent of who they are.”
The “Draft Biden” campaign has been gathering force lately as Clinton, the undisputed Democratic front-runner when she announced her bid in April, has been losing her way in polls in recent weeks, so much so that her little-known rival, Senator Bernie Sanders, is now ahead of her in Iowa and New Hampshire in a just-released CNN poll.
Uncertainty over a Biden candidacy came on a day when the Republican field, crowded with 17 presidential hopefuls, was at sixes and sevens, with name-calling reaching a new level. louisiana’s Indian-American Governor Bobby Jindal, trailing badly in the polls, surprised political watchers by launching a blistering attack on front-runner Donald Trump, calling him “a narcissist and an egomaniac”.
Jindal, who commands just a little over 1 per cent vote share, even called the billionaire businessman a “weak” candidate who does not stand for any particular set of principles or political beliefs and cares only about himself.
Jindal, who touts himself as a hardcore conservative, called upon the Republicans to stop Trump’s march and prevent him from walking away with the nomination. Trump may well be a celebrity and an entertainer but that does not entitle him to occupy the White House, Jindal commented, quipping: “Just because people like watching Kim Kardashian, we wouldn’t put her in the White House either.” Trump sought to rub in the point that Jindal had failed to qualify for the prime-time Republican debates on Fox and CNN, commenting, “He did not make the debate stage and therefore I have never met him.”