Biden: ‘God willing,’ Clinton will be president
Vice President Biden on Thursday night backed into endorsing Hillary Clinton for president, hours after President Obama threw his support behind her candidacy.
Biden slipped a word about Clinton into his speech at the American Constitution Society convention while lamenting the vacancy on the Supreme Court left by the late Justice Antonin Scalia and the refusal of the Senate to consider Obama’s nominee to replace him.
“Keep in mind, we have another entire term of this potential confusion if the vote is not allowed this year. Anybody who thinks that whatever the next president— and God willing, in my view, it’ll be Secretary Clinton,” Biden said to loud applause that he quickly tried to quiet. “Now I don’t say that for political reasons, but whoever it is, even if it is a Democrat, the idea this will be brought up within a month or two or three is highly unlikely.”
{mosads}The vice president’s remarks came as he delivered a stinging speech criticizing presumptive GOP nominee Donald Trump’s attacks on a federal judge as biased due to his heritage.
Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) also gave her support to Clinton Thursday night.
Bernie Sanders on Thursday said he would campaign for votes ahead of Tuesday’s primary in Washington, D.C., but said he would push for party unity after a meeting with Obama.
Biden considered launching a White House bid of his own last fall to challenge Clinton for their party’s nomination before ultimately deciding against it, which he announced in a high-profile speech in the White House Rose Garden.
But his presidential prospects remained on his mind, with the vice president remarking to ABC News last month, “I think I would have been the best president.”
Biden remained neutral throughout the primary, though appeared at times to favor Sanders’s focus on income inequality, saying in January that Clinton was “relatively new” to the issue.
On Thursday, Biden offered high praise of Sanders following a meeting with the independent Vermont senator but stopped short of endorsing Clinton as Obama had done.
Clinton’s campaign released a video on Thursday of Obama offering a full-throated endorsement of his 2008 Democratic rival and former secretary of State, saying, “I don’t think there’s ever been someone so qualified to hold this office.”
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