Vice President Joe Biden on Saturday received a warm welcome at a breakfast for the Congressional Black Caucus’s Annual Legislative Conference, a positive sign for him as he mulls a presidential bid.
When Biden was introduced by CBC President G.K. Butterfield and CBC Foundation Chair R. Donahue Peebles, he received two standing ovations and thunderous applause from the crowd.
“Mr. vice president, I hope that warms your heart,” Butterfield told Biden, who was shown smilingly broadly and looking visibly embarrassed on large screens throughout the Walter E. Washington Conference Center in Washington.
Biden, whom Butterfield called a “longtime friend of the CBC,” shook hands and took selfies with members of the caucus and their guests but did not take questions from the audience or deliver any remarks, offering no clues as to whether he is any closer to a decision on seeking the presidency. After the breakfast, he avoided reporters as he left the building.
In his introduction, Peebles told the audience that Biden “is a man who has not backed down from any challenge.”
The organization’s annual Phoenix Awards Dinner — which Democratic party front-runner Hillary Clinton and Martin O’Malley will attend Saturday night — will allow presidential candidates to court black Americans, one of the Democratic Party’s most solid bases. President Barack Obama will also attend the dinner.
Missouri Democratic Rep Emanuel Cleaver, a former CBC chairman, told CNN Friday that Biden is one of his “favorite humans,” but his support for the 2016 election is firmly locked in with Clinton.
Most of the caucus’s members are already attached “irrevocably” to Clinton, he said, adding that most of the CBC’s members are scheduled to sit down with Clinton before Saturday’s dinner.
Biden has said that he is considering a presidential run against Democrats like front-runner Hillary Clinton and surging Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders, but is weighing whether he and his family have the emotional endurance as they grieve for his son Beau, who died from brain cancer in May.
A group of nearly 50 top Democratic Party fundraisers and activists are circulating a letter urging him to jump into the race.