Biden says he’ll decide on 2016 by next summer

Vice President Biden on Friday said he would likely make a decision by next summer whether he will run for president in 2016. 

“I can’t,” Biden told CNN’s Kate Bolduan when asked to name a reason he should not run. “There may be reasons I don’t run. But there is no obvious reason, for me, why I think I should not run.”

To a question about his timeline for a decision, he said: “Probably, realistically a year this summer.”

{mosads}Biden said the decision would be based on whether he is the best person qualified to focus on two issues he cares about: helping the middle class and creating a foreign policy where “we not only are known for the power of our military but the power of our example.”

He described himself as sometimes too optimistic but said the country has so much just within its reach. 

“There is so much that is just within our grasp,” he said. “It doesn’t mean I am the only guy who can do it. But if no one else, I think, can and I think I can, then I’d run. If I don’t, I won’t.”

Biden, who has run for the Democratic nomination twice before, said his wife did not want him to run for president again but later urged him to in 2008, believing he could help end the war in Iraq and help the middle class.   

Biden also said it is not universally true that Democratic candidates do not want President Obama to campaign with them. In states Obama and Biden lost during the presidential election, that might be the case, he said. 

However, Biden said he had already been invited to campaign in more than 128 races. 

“Some places, the president is considerably more popular than I am, but there are some places where I can go in, and the president can’t,” he said. “There are some places where it makes no sense for me to go in and the president to go in.”

On immigration, Biden said the administration’s position is clear that its preference is to get a path to citizenship. He noted that any bill that clears the House would have to go to conference with the comprehensive proposal passed by the Senate last year. 

He expressed confidence that Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) could get immigration reform through the House and said it is understandable that the Speaker is feeling “a great deal of pressure from his right flank.” 

“Let’s be straight, as the president says,” Biden said. “You see the way the hard right responds to anything the president says. So the president is being very smart. He is saying, ‘what passed [the Senate] we support. Let’s see what you guys pass, and then we’ll respond,’ because what you don’t want is to create more problems for John Boehner.”