Joe Biden has been teasing a 2020 presidential campaign announcement for months - now he might jump in the race
- Former Vice President Joe Biden is slated to announce a 2020 campaign for president next week.
- Biden has been huddling with advisers and courting support on and off for months.
- Multiple reports over the past several months have hinted that Biden would be jumping into the race, only to be delayed.
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Former Vice President Joe Biden is reportedly gearing up to enter the large field of Democratic presidential candidates next week.
While Biden is ready to jump into the field and his advisers have been courting support among powerful groups, reports that the longtime Delaware senator is running for president have been sporadic during the first several months of 2019.
Rumors of an impending Biden announcement have been nonstop since the start of the year. On January 6, the New York Times reported Biden would "most likely make a decision within the next two weeks." Axios reported Biden was eyeing a January 15 announcement date, telling top Democrats he was inching closer to a presidential bid.
When February rolled around, The Hill reported Biden was "95 percent there" and ready to take the plunge.
Later in the month, Biden himself teased a run, telling students at the University of Delaware his family was on board with a campaign.
"The first hurdle for me was deciding whether or not I am comfortable taking the family through what would be a very, very difficult campaign," Biden said. "No matter who runs. It's a very difficult campaign. The primary will be very difficult. And the general election, running against President Trump, I don't think that he's likely to stop at anything, whomever he runs against."
"I am certain about where the family is," Biden added. "But the second piece is that I don't want this to be a fool's errand and I want to make sure that if we do this, and we're very close to getting to a decision, that I am fully prepared to do it."
In March, the Wall Street Journal reported Biden told high dollar donors he was running in an effort to court support for an announcement.
Now, well into April, Biden has yet to announce and more reports are surfacing of his imminent campaign. Earlier this week, INSIDER reported that Biden's top aide at his American Possibilities PAC met with more than a dozen Democratic chiefs of staff, courting support and conducting a focus group-like session to gauge key issues in various districts across the country.
It is not correct to say that all of the reporting on Biden running is false. He has indeed made deliberate attempts to gin up support and build a team. But Biden's been "inching closer" and "almost there" and "ready to jump in" now several times over the past few months, suggesting the possibility of indecisiveness.
And Biden did experience a spell of bad public relations in late March, in which several women accused him of inappropriately touching them and invading their personal space. The accusations prompted Biden to address the issue, pledging to change his conduct in public, but could have also spooked him and delayed a presidential run.
The many delays should be taken with a grain of salt though. While Biden is late compared to the many other Democratic candidates, the race does not heat up this early in the context of history. By this time in 2015, only three Republican candidates had announced their presidential runs, with more than a dozen to follow.