Biden: 'When your insurance rates go down, then you'll vote for me in 2016' [View all]

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By Michael O'Brien, NBC News, Oct. 31, 2012, psoted on NBCNews.com


Vice President Joe Biden made a reference to possible future political ambitions at a stop Wednesday at a restaurant in Florida.

A short while after an earlier rally -- where the vice president boasted of "being a good Biden" today -- Biden slipped into a characteristic moment, to the delight of DC's chattering class.

NBC's Carrie Dann, who is traveling with the vice president, describes the scene:

At an off-the-record stop at a restaurant called "400 station" in Sarasota, Joe Biden spoke on the phone with the brother of a voter who wanted him to chat with her Republican relative.

After chatting about the health insurance law, he concluded, "Well look, I'm not trying to talk you into voting for me, I just wanted to say hi to you, okay? And after it's all over when your insurance rates go down, then you'll vote for me in 2016. I'll talk to you later."

Biden is among the handful of Democrats included in early speculative lists of possible presidential candidates in 2016, at which point the former Delaware senator would be 73-years-old.

His viability as a candidate, though, might well hinge on the outcome of the 2012 election next Tuesday, when a second term for President Barack Obama is far from certain.


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