Joe Biden is "95 percent there" when it comes to running for president in 2020, but has not yet made that final decision, Sen. Chris Coons, D-Del., a friend and supporter of the former vice president for years, said Wednesday.
"He's told me that he is all but certain he's going to run," Sen. Coons told CNN's "New Day." "He hasn't made that last decision . . . [but] he's feeling very optimistic about the prospects and is preparing for a run, but he has not made that final decision. I expect that soon."
Coons said if Biden runs, it will mark a "big and important moment in American history," as the former vice president has a "huge reservoir of experience, both in the Senate and as the vice president in the Obama/Biden administration."
The senator, however, indicated a potential campaign theme for Biden, saying he expects him to "run looking forward, setting us on a path toward making America work again" and to work to help heal the nation's divisions and "restore respect for the presidency."
Meanwhile, comments Biden made in the 1970s about busing and desegregation have created some early controversy, but Coons said he does not expect Biden to spend time "relitigating" things he might have said decades ago.
"Obviously the United States is in a very different place today," Coons said. "Joe Biden was someone who in his entire career in the Senate was a tireless advocate for civil rights. I could cite you chapter and verse the bills he led, that he cosponsored, that he wrote, the ways in which his decades of public service he has fought for racial justice."
Sandy Fitzgerald ✉
Sandy Fitzgerald has more than three decades in journalism and serves as a general assignment writer for Newsmax covering news, media, and politics.
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