Joe Biden Gives His Biggest 2020 Signal To Date

Former Vice President Joe Biden is leaving little room for doubt on whether or not he plans to run for president in 2020. According to him, he’s “the most qualified person in the country” for the job.

Speaking before a crowd in at the University of Montana on Wednesday to promote his latest book, “Promise Me, Dad,” the former Vice President put himself at the top of the list for those best suited to run against Trump come 2020.

“I think I’m the most qualified person in the country to be president. The issues that we face as a country today are the issues that I’ve worked on my whole life – the plight of the middle class and foreign policy,” Biden said, according to the Missoula Current. “But my family and I need to decide as a unit whether we’re ready – we do everything as a family.”

If elected, the 76-year-old Biden would be the oldest President ushered into his first term by the American people. New York Times columnist Bruce Feiler, who was interviewing Biden at the time, noted that the former VP’s age and the fact he’s a “gaffe machine” would be possible objections to him running in 2020. To that, Biden played the “But I’m better than Trump” card.

“I may be a gaffe machine, but my god, what a wonderful thing compared to a guy who can’t tell the truth. No one doubts what I say, the problem is I sometimes say all that I mean,” Biden said. “The question is what kind of nation are we becoming? We can’t have four more years.”

In the same talk, Biden spoke about how he has let his life be shaped by “principles and ethics.”

Biden declaring himself “the most qualified” person for 2020 could perhaps be in response to a recent claim made by former presidential candidate John Kerry.

“Am I going to think about it? Yeah, I’m going to think about it,” Kerry said at Harvard’s John F. Kennedy Jr. Forum last week. “I’m not taking anything off the table. I haven’t been running around to the most obvious states, laying any groundwork or doing anything.”

“I’m perfectly ready to embrace somebody that I think can win, or who wants to address all the issues that I just talked about and understands them,” he continued. “But I’m going to be very candid here, and some people who are thinking about it aren’t going to love me for it, but I’m not — I don’t see the person yet that I’m prepared to say that about.”

Of course, John Kerry and Joe Biden’s proposed runs are not nearly as laughable as Hillary Clinton’s proposed 2020 ticket, which may indeed be a reality, according to one of her top aides.

“Get ready for Hillary Clinton 4.0. More than 30 years in the making, this new version of Mrs. Clinton, when she runs for president in 2020, will come full circle—back to the universal-health-care-promoting progressive firebrand of 1994,” said Mark Penn in a recent article for the Wall Street Journal. “True to her name, Mrs. Clinton will fight this out until the last dog dies. She won’t let a little thing like two stunning defeats stand in the way of her claim to the White House.”

The circus is coming back to town.