I think I'm basically for the William Polk/George McGovern plan of withdrawal and international cooperation combined with Peter Galbraith's plan of partition. I like how Biden expresses an interest in partition, but he doesn't seem serious to me about really getting anywhere on Iraq. Correct me if I'm wrong, but where has he ever shown a serious implementation of partition which he pays lip service to, and for a withdrawal of troops and an end to the war?

Raw Story, July 5

At a campaign stop in Des Moines, Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden had some tough words for the President, along with two GOP presidential candidates. "This guy is brain dead," Biden said of Bush, eliciting a chorus of laughter from his audience. Known for his slips of the tongue, Biden added, "I know I’ll be quoted, I’ll be killed for that.”

Speaking of Bush's decision to commute the sentence of Scooter Libby, Biden stated, “This is a guy who is on the balls of his heels, here’s a guy who is lower off in the polls than any president in modern history and he goes ahead and he does something that just flies in the face of the sensibilities of the American people.”

The outspoken senator did not stop with the President, singling out Rudy Giuiliani, "I can hardly wait to debate Rudy Giuliani if he is their nominee,” he said. “Because I will eat his lunch."

Not wanting to leave the other GOP front-runner unscathed, Biden said of Mitt Romney, "I found Romney’s statements yesterday profound – crazy — when he talked about going to war with Iran, why are we talking about going to war with Iran?”

See Agonist Story:

Candidate Joe Biden's Plan for Iraq

Agonist Articles on Joe Biden:

Agonist Articles on Joe Biden (this page may take a minute to load, because it is search-generated)

Also see the recent Charlie Rose interview:

A conversation with Senator Joesph Biden August 9, 2007

New Hampshire Union Leader Correspondent
14 hours, 17 minutes ago

Nashua – Delaware senator and presidential candidate Joe Biden called for a sensible end to the violence in Iraq yesterday.

Addressing members of the Nashua Rotary Club at a luncheon at the Nashua Country Club, Biden called the war in Iraq a "big boulder" preventing the United States from regaining credibility around the world and taking care of its domestic issues.

The war, Biden said, has cost the United States more than 3,600 lives and injured nearly 25,000 others because the country went to war prematurely without the a significant number of soldiers and without a plan on how to end it.

"Everyone has said there needs to be a political solution yet neither party has offered a political solution," said Biden. "Not a single person has suggested a political outcome that will stop the civil war." Biden also criticized a continued occupation or picking a side in the sectarian conflicts and wiping the opposition out. Instead, Iraq should have a decentralized government, which the Iraqi Constitution calls for, and give control to the Kurds, Shiites and Sunnis to their own regions.

"Not in the lifetime of anyone in this room will there be a centralized democratic government in Iraq," Biden said.

Unfortunately, the United States does not have the credibility to fix Iraq on its own, which is why he is urging the Secretary of State to set up a meeting with the United Nations Security Council for an international conference on Iraq, he said.

However, Biden added, "This plan has a shelf life. If it doesn't occur shortly, it will end in a catastrophe." The U.S. military also cannot sustain the troop rotations in Iraq much longer, said Biden, who recalled that during one of his visits to the country he met some troops who were on their fourth or fifth tour.

"We are breaking the U.S. military. We're killing these guys. We're killing these women," he said.

Biden's appearance in Nashua was one of several he had scheduled in the state. He had stops at the Veterans Home in Tilton, at the Manchester Veterans Hospital and at Liberty House, also in Manchester.

Biden's son headed to Iraq in 2008
Biden's Son Preparing for Deployment to Iraq Next Year

Staff
AP News
Aug 16, 2007 17:21 EDT

The son of Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden is preparing for deployment to Iraq next year.

Capt. Beau Biden, a Judge Advocate General in the Delaware National Guard and the state's attorney general, is part of the 261st Signal Brigade that has been told to prepare for duty in Iraq in 2008. They have not been given a date of deployment yet.

"I don't want him going," Delaware Sen. Joe Biden said from the campaign trail Wednesday, according to a report on Radio Iowa. "But I tell you what, I don't want my grandson or my granddaughters going back in 15 years and so how we leave makes a big difference."

Biden criticized Democratic rivals such as Sens. Hillary Rodham Clinton and Barack Obama who have voted against Iraq funding bills to try to pressure President Bush to end the war.

"There's no political point worth my son's life," Biden said, according to Radio Iowa. "There's no political point worth anybody's life out there. None."

TPM

Senator hopes politicos' endorsements translate into support at caucuses

By NICOLE GAUDIANO, Gannett News Service
Posted Monday, September 17, 2007

Gannett

DAVENPORT, Iowa -- Sen. Joe Biden grabbed Iowa state Sen. Frank Wood's hand, slapped his shoulder and looked him in the eye.

"Look me over," Biden said, standing inches away from Wood at an August picnic for the Scott County Democrats. "If you can't, you can't, but I'd like to have a shot."

Hoping to boost his chances in the first state to choose a Democratic presidential nominee, Biden has been making an aggressive pitch for Iowa lawmakers' support that's producing some surprising results.

While polls place Biden at the back of the eight-candidate Democratic pack, he's in the top tier in Iowa when it comes to legislative endorsements. He received his eighth last week from the state's Democratic House Majority Leader Rep. Kevin McCarthy of Des Moines.

As of Friday, Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton of New York had 16 legislative endorsements in Iowa, while former Sen. John Edwards of North Carolina had eight and Sen. Barack Obama of Illinois had 10, according to their campaigns.

Biden's "experience, especially foreign-policy experience, is just unmatched," said McCarthy, a Polk County prosecutor who helped engineer the Democratic takeover of the Iowa Statehouse last year. "I think he's the most competent to handle the situation in Iraq."

Legislative endorsements are a key part of Biden's strategy for a surprise Iowa caucus showing in January, which he hopes will give him momentum to succeed in other states.

In late 2006 -- before he announced his presidential candidacy -- he attended about 60 events in Iowa, mainly to help Democratic state lawmakers win back the Statehouse. According to McCarthy's count, Biden has appeared at more events for legislative Democrats than any other candidate.

Some of those lawmakers are now helping Biden.

"We're trying to create a buzz out here," said Biden, after speaking at a fundraiser barbecue in Ottumwa for state Rep. Mary Gaskill, who said she would settle on her candidate this month. "This is wide open, and these folks don't endorse if they think you're going to lose."

The importance of endorsements in Iowa is debatable. At a summer panel discussion of elected politicians and party activists at Wartburg College in Waverly, Iowa, the consensus was that they have little value, said Fred Waldstein, a political science professor at the college.

"At least in Iowa, the people will make up their own mind about candidates based upon personal observations and other more direct forms of learning," he said.

But Biden's political director, Danny O'Brien, said the state lawmakers who endorsed Biden "become our surrogates and help us connect with their constituents."

"But just as importantly, they help us send a message nationally as to what's going on in the early states in the face of tough national polls right now that don't have us in the top tier," O'Brien said.

State Rep. Elesha Gayman of Davenport said Biden's pitch for her blessing focused on foreign policy, his experience and "being a fighter, not one to back down from a situation."

"He was probably the more aggressive of [the candidates]," said Gayman, who met twice with Biden. "I had voicemails once a week for a month from him."

The message impressed but didn't sway Gayman -- or Wood -- who instead endorsed Obama. She liked Obama's "vision," while Wood liked "the idea that he's not Washington-ized."

But state Sen. Joe Seng of Davenport said he turned to Biden because of his leadership and 34 years of experience as a senator.

"Those three candidates don't even equal half his tenure in office," Seng said of Clinton, Edwards and Obama's combined years in the Senate. "If you're effective, you need to know the system."

State Rep. Jim Lykam, who was Biden's first legislative endorser, said he likes Biden's plan to "get us out of Iraq."

"Hillary and Obama are raising tons of money, but I think Joe's going to be peaking at the right time," said Lykam

Biden's legislative endorsements include Seng and seven representatives, a number that's "pretty surprising" to Edwards supporter state Rep. Andrew Wenthe, given Biden's standings in the polls and Obama and Clinton's superior investment of money and resources.

Even after running television ads in Iowa, Biden remained low on the list of Iowa registered Democrats, Democratic voters and Democratic caucus-goers, according to a Los Angeles Times-Bloomberg Poll released on Sept. 11.

Asked if the January Democratic caucus were being held today, 2 percent said they would vote for Biden, while 28 percent said they would vote for Clinton. Biden's number climbed to just 7 percent when respondents were asked who would be the best at ending the war in Iraq, his signature issue.

McCarthy doesn't give the polls a second thought, calling them "virtually meaningless" at this stage. As part of Biden's Iowa team, McCarthy said he will try to line up more endorsements for Biden and get supporters signed up for caucus night. He'll also help with national fundraising by showing that, despite low rankings in the national polls, Biden has support in Iowa.

"We know Iowa better than anybody else," he said. "The reason why we're putting our names on the line is we sense movement and we sense [campaign] infrastructure being built."
Contact Nicole Gaudiano at ngaudiano@gns.gannett.com.
StoryChat

Joe Biden's plan for a federal system in Iraq passed the Senate today by a vote of 75-23, garnering key bipartisan support from leaders of both parties.

It was a major repudiation of President Bush's failed policy in Iraq and a significant step forward on bringing an end to the violence in Iraq.

Link

NYT

October 9, 2007

By MICHAEL COOPER

FORT MADISON, Iowa, Oct. 5 — As he strode into a coffee-and-scones meeting with the Jasper County Democrats the other night in Newton, Iowa, Senator Joseph R. Biden Jr. slipped off his suit jacket and unknotted his tie.

“Folks, I apologize if I’m a little overdressed,” Mr. Biden told the small group.

The senator explained that he had just barely caught the direct flight from Washington to Des Moines that evening, “since neither Hillary nor Barack will lend me their G5 jets,” and that there had been no time to change. “I got in the plane — I was meeting with President Talabani, you know, he’s the Kurdish leader in Iraq, and I literally ran from that meeting in the Capitol.”

It pretty much summed up the two worlds that Mr. Biden inhabits these days.

In Washington Mr. Biden, chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, helps set the terms of the debate on Iraq, pushing for a looser federalist system there that has won the support of the Senate, and the ire of the Bush administration.

But on the campaign trail he is struggling to draw crowds and coverage to help him get heard above rivals who are so well known that their first names — Hillary and Barack — suffice.

It is a plight familiar to quite a few candidates who find themselves at the back of the Democratic pack this year — candidates who barely register in news accounts of the campaign despite impressive résumés that distinguish them from many of the more unorthodox also-rans of campaigns past.

Even with their considerable credentials, Democrats like Mr. Biden; Gov. Bill Richardson of New Mexico, a former ambassador to the United Nations; and Senator Christopher J. Dodd, the chairman of the banking committee, find themselves lumped in with the kind of candidates who are usually unable to break into public consciousness unless they fall off a stage at a pancake breakfast or suffer some other mishap. For them it is a vicious circle: low poll numbers discourage news coverage, and a lack of coverage makes raising poll numbers difficult.

“I didn’t think, to use a trite expression, that all the oxygen would be sucked out of the air for so long,” Mr. Biden said in an interview. And breaking through, he said, is difficult because his campaign has received such little attention from national reporters, especially compared with the wall-to-wall coverage his race for president drew two decades ago. “I thought you guys would be out here a lot sooner,” he said.

Of course it did not help that Mr. Biden’s campaign got off to a wince-worthy start when, the day of his announcement, a furor broke out over his remark that Senator Barack Obama of Illinois was “the first mainstream African-American who is articulate and bright and clean and a nice-looking guy,” which offended many.

Since then, for all his ubiquity on the Sunday political shows and his well-received debate performances, he has trailed three formidable opponents in both fund-raising and attention: Mr. Obama, Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton of New York and former Senator John Edwards of North Carolina.

So now Mr. Biden, 64, is courting Iowa voters in breakfasts and lunches of a dozen here, a few dozen there. At each stop he makes the case that in a time of war, Democrats need a nominee with unimpeachable foreign policy credentials who also can do well in Republican states. And he warns Democrats not to be lulled by President Bush’s unpopularity and the perceived weakness of the Republican field of candidates.

“This idea that we’re just going to nominate anyone and they’re automatically going to win is, I think, a little naïve,” he told a small group at breakfast in Fort Madison on Friday.

So Mr. Biden has begun engaging Mrs. Clinton and Mr. Obama, asking at nearly every stop how they can square their recent votes to stop financing the war in Iraq — Mr. Biden voted to continue the financing — with their recent concessions that they cannot guarantee all the troops will be home by 2013.

Over the summer, when Mr. Obama called for striking at terrorist camps in Pakistan if the Pakistanis fail to do so, Mr. Biden questioned his foreign policy acumen by saying that he was describing existing policy. And Mr. Biden, who calls Mrs. Clinton a friend, said in the interview that even though he did not blame her for being a polarizing figure, it should concern voters who want to see a Democrat elected president.

“It’s really not her fault,” he said of the strong reaction toward Mrs. Clinton over the years. “But you know, and people know, there is going to be that great ‘vast right wing conspiracy’ — it’s going to mobilize. And I think people are going to start sitting there thinking, whoa, wait a minute. Do we want to go there again?”

At several stops he sharply criticized Mrs. Clinton’s recent vote to name the Iranian Revolutionary Guard a sponsor of terrorism. “The idea of giving the president an excuse to be able to go to war with Iran I found absolutely mindless,” he said. “I was dumbfounded when Hillary voted for it.”

Before Mr. Biden can be seen as an alternative, though, he has other hurdles to jump. Mr. Edwards is making similar electability arguments against Mrs. Clinton and Mr. Obama, and has more money and higher poll ratings. Mr. Richardson, who has also out-raised Mr. Biden, is also running on foreign policy expertise.

Mr. Biden’s bid to run as the steady, experienced foreign policy hand was not strengthened last winter when he was forced to explain his remarks about Mr. Obama.

It was a reminder that Mr. Biden’s strength as a speaker — which was hard won after he overcame a childhood stutter — has been a double-edged sword. In fact, it was the very thing that doomed his 1988 campaign. That year, after a promising start, he dropped out of the race after he was caught exaggerating his academic record at a town hall meeting and, in a major debate, using lines from a British politician without attribution.

Now he is focusing most of his resources in Iowa, where he has moved many of his top aides, quietly built an organization and won endorsements from 10 state lawmakers. He is doing the same kind of retail campaigning that helped him get elected to the Senate in 1972 at the age of 29 — he did not turn 30, the minimum age for a senator, until shortly after Election Day.

Mr. Biden may sometimes seem a caricature for long-windedness in Washington, but he goes over well with Iowans, who sit nodding through his stories-within-stories about the Senate and his meetings with presidents and world leaders.

He also has a compelling personal story, bits of which he sometimes shares with audiences.

In his recent memoir, “Promises to Keep,” which hit the bestseller list this summer, he writes about the death of his first wife and toddler daughter in a car accident just after he was first elected to the Senate, his decision to commute home to Delaware every night to be with his two sons, his disastrous presidential campaign in 1988, his role in helping block Judge Robert H. Bork’s nomination to the United States Supreme Court and how he rebuilt his career and his life with his wife, Jill, and his family.

At each stop, people come away talking about supporting him or at least giving him a second look, and they muse about why he is so far behind in the polls and out of the news.

“He’s not even mentioned, is he?” asked Betty Foody, 85, who said she supported Mr. Biden and who joined about a dozen people to hear him speak at a pizzeria in Sigourney.

After Mr. Biden addressed the small breakfast in Fort Madison at the Ivy Bake Shoppe and Cafe, George Wright, a 73-year-old lawyer who said he supported Mr. Edwards, pronounced him “impressive” and went on to make an observation that the Biden campaign could probably live without.

“This is what’s nice about Iowa being the first-in-the-nation caucus: you can sit in a room this size with, what, 14 people, and hear him,” Mr. Wright said. “The problem, with Obama and Hillary and even Edwards now, is that the crowds are getting too big. You can’t do this anymore.”

But Mr. Biden continues, undeterred, to ask people for their support, or at least a look.

“I think I have the ingredients,” Mr. Biden told a crowd of around 50 people who gathered to hear him speak in Burlington. “I could be wrong, to state the obvious, and if I’m wrong, then you’ll have to watch me on the Sunday shows and in the Senate. But if I’m right, then you may have the chance to really, really change the world.”

At least he got a full article written on him - and he's not doing as bad as Dodd is.

This article can be found on the web at
http://www.thenation.com/doc/20071126/nichols

by JOHN NICHOLS

[from the November 26, 2007 issue]

If the Democratic presidential primary were held today in your state, whom would you support? Cast your vote in the Nation Poll.

I'm not in the habit of making campaign endorsements, and if I was, I'd probably urge a write-in vote for Russ Feingold, Joe Biden's colleague on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, who combines Biden's political smarts with a record on military adventurism and civil liberties that's far more to my liking. But I do endorse realism, and as such I can't buy the argument that Biden is significantly less acceptable than the Democratic front-runners. Biden maintains 100 percent ratings from Planned Parenthood, the League of Conservation Voters, Americans United for Separation of Church and State, Citizens for Tax Justice, the Children's Defense Fund and the NAACP; and 93 percent from the AFL-CIO--these numbers are every bit as liberal as his competitors'.

I don't forgive Biden's wrong vote to authorize George W. Bush's attack on Iraq, but neither do I forgive those of Hillary Clinton and John Edwards. Unlike either of them, Biden tried to constrain the Administration when he and Senator Richard Lugar fought in 2002 to require diplomatic efforts before military options could be considered. As Foreign Relations Committee chair, Biden remains far more engaged than his opponents in the debate about how to address the Iraq crisis. That does not mean his "solutions" are better, but it does mean he is more agile than most Democrats when it comes to debating policy.

It is, to be sure, a hard-won agility. Biden has more bruises than his fellow Democrats because he has gotten in the ring more often than most of them. His bruises are the marks of experience and determination, which ought not to be underestimated. At a time when too many Democrats are prone to pulling punches, he knows how to throw them. No Democrat with an eye on the 2008 prize failed to thrill when Biden used an otherwise forgettable October debate to kneecap the GOP front-runner. While the other Democrats poked one another to uninspired effect, Biden ridiculed Rudy Giuliani for waging a campaign based on "a noun, a verb and 9/11." This was Biden at his best: fast on his feet, muscularly partisan, devastatingly effective at tossing barbs. These strengths have kept the Delaware senator on the national scene for thirty-five years, and they make him the most quick-witted of this season's Democratic contenders.

Of course, Biden is not always at his best, as a failed 1988 presidential quest and several false starts since then can attest. He's a big talker, and he's made some big gaffes. But no Democratic contender has been so steadily "on" during this campaign. And even if Biden's poll numbers remain soft, that October debate confirmed his ability to stir things up.

In the blood-sport competition for the presidency, Biden's flair for finding the GOP jugular ought to count for something among Democrats who grumble about their last two nominees' failure to play offense. Of an old breed of Democrats who fought their way out of the back rooms of urban East Coast politics, Biden beat an entrenched Republican to enter the Senate, held his seat during GOP landslide years, used his Judiciary Committee chairmanship in the 1980s to block some of Ronald Reagan's Supreme Court nominees and corporate-sponsored tort "reform," and not only wrote the Violence Against Women Act but got it reauthorized by two Republican-led Congresses. Biden is best understood as a relatively rare political archetype: a Democrat who pays less attention to internal party politics than to winning elections and governing. This skill makes him the one Democrat Republicans feel compelled not merely to attack but to answer. That's because Biden has so far been the one Democrat who has consistently understood the importance of taking the fight to the other guys.

Posted: Thursday, November 08, 2007 4:00 PM by Domenico Montanaro
Filed Under: 2008, Biden, Richardson

http://firstread.msnbc.msn.com/archive/2007/11/08/456068.aspx

From NBC/NJ’s Mike Memoli [in Manchester, N.H.] and NBC’s Lauren Appelbaum [in Washington, D.C.]

Biden and Richardson leaned on their experience during separate foreign policy speeches this morning, with each calling for a new approach to Pakistan. Biden later accused Richardson of changing positions on international issues in order to curry favor with the Democratic electorate.

Speaking at the Impact ’08 summit at St. Anselm’s College this morning, Biden in particular sought to highlight what he said were his prescient comments on Pakistan before the current crisis developed. "People don't get it. All these dots are connected folks," Biden said in what was billed as a major speech. "There is no way to discretely deal with any nation in that region without understanding the repercussions, good and bad, for every other nation in the region. Neither the Democratic nor Republican candidates seem to understand that."

Biden accused Pervez Musharraf of imposing a coup against his own government, and warned that without swift resolution, the world may see a repeat of the 1979 Iranian Revolution. "That moderate majority must have a voice in the system and an outlet with elections,” Biden said. “If not, moderates may find that they have no choice but to take common cause with extremists, just as the Shah's opponents did in Iran three decades ago."

Biden also criticized the Bush administration for waiting days to contact the principals in the region. By comparison, he noted that he spoke with Benazir Bhutto the day the state of the emergency was declared, and was in contact with Musharraf days later. "President Bush's first reaction was to call on President Musharraf to reverse course. Given the stakes, I thought it might be more important to actually call him -- than rather call on him."

Biden called for dealing “proactively” with the current situation, but also for a long-term plan to strengthen Pakistan’s moderate majority, and to create conditions in the region that ensure a real democracy thrives in the region.

Richardson, who spoke first this morning, also drew comparisons between Pakistan today and Iran in 1979, saying that the United States cannot support what is essentially a military dictatorship. "We made the mistake years ago of backing a dictatorship in Iran and we are paying for it today," Richardson said. "At this very juncture, unless we shift our policy in Pakistan, in two of the more crucial parts of the world, unless we advocate democracy and human rights and a dramatic change in Pakistan, we are in danger of making the same mistake."

The convergence of Biden and Richardson today brought together decades of foreign policy experience -- Biden as chair of the foreign relations committee, and Richardson as a former U.N. Ambassador and negotiator. Talking to reporters after his speech, Biden said he was confident that if foreign policy remains a top concern, he would do well. Asked if he and Richardson might split up those votes, he acknowledged it was possible, but took aim at the New Mexico governor’s campaign positions.

“Bill has been sort of all over the board on his foreign policy,” he said. “First he endorsed the Biden plan for getting out of Iraq, then he said he’d get them all out in three months. Then he said it will take six months. Then no, it’ll take a year. And now it’s back to whatever it is.”

“I think Bill is banking on that portion of the Democratic Party that just wants to hear, ‘I’ll get out tomorrow,’” he continued. “I just think he has decided on a different tactic, and I’m not so sure that tactic is working.”

He also noted that despite Richardson spending millions on advertising, he has started to pull ahead of him in the early states. “I think people are going to start making discriminating judgments about whether we know what we’re talking about,” he said. "I'm operating on the premise that the American people are looking for someone tell the truth ... just lay out the facts, state what the facts are. Not attempt to sugarcoat where we are. ... You're not going to get the troops out in three weeks or three months or six months."

Richardson spoke about environmental issues in Portsmouth this afternoon, and was not available after for a response. A campaign spokesperson also declined to comment.

McClatchy Newspapers, By Renee Schoof, November 16

WASHINGTON — Under cover of night, Sen. Joseph Biden Jr. drove up to a yellowed stucco mansion in Belgrade where Yugoslavian leader Slobodan Milosevic was waiting. It was April 1993, about a year after Serbian forces and paramilitary gangs armed by Milosevic had unleashed a murderous campaign against Bosnia's Croats and Muslims.

Biden had been calling for sanctions and NATO air strikes against the Serbs and lifting a weapons ban on the Bosnians. All that would happen later, but at the time he was getting nowhere. Milosevic was paying attention, though. He invited Biden to his palace for a private chat.

As Biden tells the story in his memoir "Promises to Keep," the Serbian leader argued that the Serbs weren't persecutors but victims. Biden responded with accusations of Serbian atrocities. Milosevic denied them.

Finally, Biden recalled, "Milosevic could tell I had just about had it with his lies, and at one point he looked up from the maps and said, without any emotion, 'What do you think of me?' "

"I think you're a damn war criminal, and you should be tried as one."

After hoping for late surge, Del. Democrat gets 1 percent of vote

Delaware News Journal, By Nicole Gaudiano, January 4

Sen. Joe Biden, D-Del., ended his run for the Democratic nomination for president after getting just 1 percent of Iowa caucus-goers to support him.

In a speech to supporters with his tearful wife, Jill, at his side, Biden declared, "I ain't going away."

"I'll be going back to the Senate as the chairman of the Foreign Relations Committee and I will continue to make the case I've been making," he said.

He said he would continue to insist that Congress keep its commitment to men and women in harm's way.

"I will be their worst nightmare if they do not," he said with 14 family members, some teary-eyed, standing behind him at a caucus rally.

Biden political director Danny O'Brien said Biden was dropping out because, "obviously, there's not a lot of space up there.

"The three candidates dominated this contest today," he said.

[...]

Biden said he wouldn’t be endorsing anyone at this stage. Asked whether he would want to be considered as a vice president, he said he could have more influence as chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.

He also said, “no, no” when asked about taking a position as secretary of state. But then he seemed to leave the door open.

“When you’re secretary of state, I’d have to be convinced that the nominee, the Democratic president, we really shared the same kind of views,” he said.