http://www.politico.com/story/2015/08/joe-beau-biden-president-hype-2016-121749.html?hp=t2_rBehind the Biden hype
As the veep decides, friends tell POLITICO he's undecided and still 'not himself' while inside the White House Obama has at times privately leaned to Clinton.
By Glenn Thrush
8/26/15 5:06 AM EDT
Updated 8/26/15 8:34 AM EDT
The Joe Biden who has been reaching out to Democratic operatives and would-be donors for a potential 2016 bid isn’t quite the happy warrior of bygone days.
Mourning the loss of his eldest son Beau, who succumbed to a brain tumor three months ago, and under intense pressure from the presidential hype he’s helped stoke, Biden is more subdued, grayer, and grimly on-task than usual — this while occupying political center stage for the first time since the promising open days of his doomed 1988 campaign.
For all the breathless reporting on Biden’s every move and meeting, he is, at core, a 72-year-old man presented with an unexpected, once-in-a-lifetime opportunity at one of the worst times of his life.
Several people Biden has talked to in the past month say he starts off conversations by conceding that “some days are better than others,” mixing recollections of Beau with logistical questions about mounting a state-by-state challenge to a vulnerable yet still formidable Hillary Clinton.
“He’s just not himself,” says a longtime friend of Biden’s. “He’s sort of all over the place. He’s engaged but not in that child-like, manic way he usually is. He’s taking it all in and soaking up information, but he’s hard to read. And Joe Biden isn’t usually that hard to read.”
That isn’t to say Biden won’t decide to run — he clearly sees Clinton’s struggles with her email scandal as an opportunity, and no politician in recent history has proven to be as resilient in the face of personal tragedy.
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http://www.politico.com/story/2015/08/joe-beau-biden-president-hype-2016-121749.html#ixzz3jvMDdvAi
