Joe Biden: No sense of ‘joy’ in Hillary Clinton’s campaign

Former Vice President Joe Biden said he never got a sense of “joy” in Hillary Clinton’s 2016 presidential campaign, telling Vanity Fair in a new interview that the failed Democratic nominee appeared to be more driven by outside forces than her own ambition.

Mr. Biden was asked about a passage in his forthcoming memoir “Promise me, Dad,” in which he reportedly describes a “twinge of sadness” he felt for Mrs. Clinton when she revealed she was going to run for president during a visit to the Naval Observatory in Washington, Mr. Biden’s former residence.

“The sage political analysts would say she was probably on her way to a historic victory — the first woman to win the White House,” Mr. Biden wrote, according to Vanity Fair. “But she did not evince much joy at the prospect of running. I may have misread her entirely that morning, but she seemed to me like a person propelled by forces not entirely of her own making.”

In an interview published Wednesday, Mr. Biden elaborated that he felt Mrs. Clinton was saddled with a lot of baggage throughout her candidacy.

“Everyone thinks it was just raw ambition on her part,” he said. “I think she was sort of a prisoner of history. First woman who had a better-than-even chance of getting the nomination. First woman, relative to the Republican field, who had a better-than-even chance of being president. But there’s a lot of baggage, fair and unfair, and there was no illusion on her part — this wasn’t going to be a Marquess of Queensberry fight.

“And so I never got the sense that there was any joy in her campaign. Maybe it’s me, but I find joy in doing this,” the Democrat added.

Of @HillaryClinton, @JoeBiden tells @MrKamp, “I never got the sense that there was any joy in her campaign.” https://t.co/pU9WlS9CJs

— VANITY FAIR (@VanityFair) October 25, 2017

Mr. Biden didn’t to rule out a potential 2020 presidential run for himself, explaining that he’s waiting to “see what happens.”

The former vice president went on to say that President Trump, who he described as “self-referential and uninformed,” poses a threat to American values.

“This sounds corny,” he said, “but everything the founders did was to erect institutions that made it more difficult to abuse power. That’s why they have three different branches of government. And what really worries me about this administration is the frontal attack on those institutions that, if they were lost, makes the abuse of power so much more available.”