US Vice President Joe Biden on Saturday met with US Senator Elizabeth Warren, a popular progressive leader with a big support base among Democrats, as he mulls whether to run for president, according to a source familiar with the matter.
Biden has been huddling with senior advisers to evaluate options for taking on former US secretary of state Hillary Rodham Clinton, the Democratic front-runner who has struggled to overcome fallout from her use of a private e-mail server while working as the nation’s top diplomat.
His meeting with Warren is further evidence of how seriously the vice president is considering a run for the party’s nomination. Warren has a lot of support from liberal-leaning groups that would be critical to winning in early voting states.
She has said she does not plan to run for president herself, but she has not endorsed Clinton or any other Democratic candidate.
The vice president’s office declined to comment other than to say Biden had left his home in Delaware to come to Washington.
“The vice president traveled last minute to Washington, DC, for a private meeting and will be returning to Delaware,” a White House official said.
Biden’s entry into the race would up-end the primary process. He has a long history of supporting policies to boost the middle class, an issue that is important to Warren and that Clinton has made one of the signature issues of her campaign.
However, his late entry into the race and Clinton’s formidable lead in infrastructure and fundraising would put him at a disadvantage.
“He has a resume second to none. He’s been an extraordinary partner to this president. And economic viability of the middle class has been his focus and concern throughout his career,” said David Axelrod, US President Barack Obama’s chief strategist in his 2008 and 2012 campaigns.
That said, he’s well behind the front-runner in polling, money and organization ... Unless the picture changes dramatically, it would be a heavy lift,” Axelrod said.
Though the vice president does not have a formal campaign structure, an outside political “Super Pac” called Draft Biden is laying the groundwork if he decides to jump into the race.
“All of a sudden the vice president’s exceptionally serious,” said Draft Biden adviser Steve Schale, a top strategist in Florida for Obama’s campaigns in 2008 and 2012. “Our job is to make sure that if he makes the decision to run ... there’s a little bit of infrastructure in place for him to hit the ground.”
A fire caused by a burst gas pipe yesterday spread to several homes and sent a fireball soaring into the sky outside Malaysia’s largest city, injuring more than 100 people. The towering inferno near a gas station in Putra Heights outside Kuala Lumpur was visible for kilometers and lasted for several hours. It happened during a public holiday as Muslims, who are the majority in Malaysia, celebrate the second day of Eid al-Fitr. National oil company Petronas said the fire started at one of its gas pipelines at 8:10am and the affected pipeline was later isolated. Disaster management officials said shutting the
US Vice President J.D. Vance on Friday accused Denmark of not having done enough to protect Greenland, when he visited the strategically placed and resource-rich Danish territory coveted by US President Donald Trump. Vance made his comment during a trip to the Pituffik Space Base in northwestern Greenland, a visit viewed by Copenhagen and Nuuk as a provocation. “Our message to Denmark is very simple: You have not done a good job by the people of Greenland,” Vance told a news conference. “You have under-invested in the people of Greenland, and you have under-invested in the security architecture of this
UNREST: The authorities in Turkey arrested 13 Turkish journalists in five days, deported a BBC correspondent and on Thursday arrested a reporter from Sweden Waving flags and chanting slogans, many hundreds of thousands of anti-government demonstrators on Saturday rallied in Istanbul, Turkey, in defence of democracy after the arrest of Istanbul Mayor Ekrem Imamoglu which sparked Turkey’s worst street unrest in more than a decade. Under a cloudless blue sky, vast crowds gathered in Maltepe on the Asian side of Turkey’s biggest city on the eve of the Eid al-Fitr celebration which started yesterday, marking the end of Ramadan. Ozgur Ozel, chairman of the main opposition Republican People’s Party (CHP), which organized the rally, said there were 2.2 million people in the crowd, but
JOINT EFFORTS: The three countries have been strengthening an alliance and pressing efforts to bolster deterrence against Beijing’s assertiveness in the South China Sea The US, Japan and the Philippines on Friday staged joint naval drills to boost crisis readiness off a disputed South China Sea shoal as a Chinese military ship kept watch from a distance. The Chinese frigate attempted to get closer to the waters, where the warships and aircraft from the three allied countries were undertaking maneuvers off the Scarborough Shoal — also known as Huangyan Island (黃岩島) and claimed by Taiwan and China — in an unsettling moment but it was warned by a Philippine frigate by radio and kept away. “There was a time when they attempted to maneuver
RSS