Joe Biden Will Not Run for President

Vice President Joe Biden has said that he will not compete for the Democratic nomination to run for president of the United States in the 2016 election.

The news comes after months of speculation and anticipation he would join the contest, according to The New York Times. Frontrunner Hillary Clinton has faltered as her email scandal ate up press coverage and into her poll numbers and Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders has had a meteoric rise in the polls, where he leads Clinton in the crucial early primary states of Iowa and New Hampshire.

Biden was seen as a safe, centrist alternative to Clinton in case her email scandal blew up and derailed her nomination, which is still possible, as a federal judge has ordered that her emails from her time as Secretary of State be released monthly.

While many voters deem Clinton as untrustworthy, her decent performance at the first Democratic debate appears to have been enough to assuage the concerns of large donors and party operatives who had begun to doubt Clinton.

Although Bernie Sanders continues to rise in the polls nationwide, he is still a relatively unknown entity to the majority of Americans. This is proving to be particularly challenging for the self-described "democratic socialist" in the state of South Carolina, which will vote third in the primary process.

To that state's critical black population, Sanders is virtually unknown, but he has begun to deploy resources in the state so that he can begin to make an impression. His record of being arrested while fighting for Civil Rights in the 1960s could also prove to be an asset to him.