Biden announces 2nd term in office before winning the 1st one

Joe Biden is so confident he's going to beat 20 other Democrats in the race to wrest the presidency from Donald Trump in 2020 that he reassured voters he wouldn't retire after just one term because of his age.

Asked whether his age would prompt him to serve only one term, Biden exclaimed "No!" apparently taken aback at the suggestion from The View host Joy Behar.

"The idea of committing to only do one term… it's a legitimate question to ask about my age," Biden admitted, but "hopefully, I can demonstrate, not only with age has come wisdom, and experience that can make things a lot better."

Biden, who at 76 would be the oldest president in US history, spent eight years as vice president under Barack Obama and has run for president twice before, flaming out in his 1987 bid after he was caught plagiarizing a campaign speech, and ultimately attaching himself to Obama's campaign in 2008. 

"But that's for you all to decide," he concluded, remembering voters' role in the process in the nick of time.

The third-time's-the-charm candidate also addressed a taunt from his would-be rival President Donald Trump, snarking: "If he looks young and vibrant compared to me, I should probably go home."

Earlier on Friday, Trump had declared: "I am a young, vibrant man. I look at Joe, I don't know about him." Trump trailed Biden by eight points in a recent Monmouth poll, and by four years in the age department.

Biden officially announced his candidacy on Thursday with a melodramatic campaign video claiming "everything that made America, America, is at stake" in the 2020 election, warning that "if we give Donald Trump eight years in the White House, he will forever and fundamentally alter the character of this nation." It was illustrated with ominous clips of a 2017 Charlottesville protest against the removal of Confederate statues, the scene of a car-ramming attack that killed a counter-protester.

While Biden currently leads the crowded Democratic field of nearly two dozen candidates, the primaries remain over a year away, and his candidacy is far from in the bag. He reportedly raised $6.3 million on his first official day of fundraising, but it's unclear if that total includes donations he solicited before officially announcing his candidacy.

As a Washington insider for nearly four decades, he has accumulated a certain reputation, which includes videos and photos appearing to show him groping and sniffing children and women. While Biden's detractors use them to accuse him of #MeToo-related hypocrisy, his supporters (and himself) dismiss this behavior as simple friendliness – though seven women have accused him of inappropriate physical contact in recent weeks.

Biden attempted to address some criticisms during the View appearance, spinning the smear campaign against Anita Hill, the woman who accused 1991 Supreme Court nominee Clarence Thomas of sexual harassment, as "one of the reasons why we have the #MeToo movement." Biden reached out to Hill, telling her "I'm sorry for the way you were treated" earlier this month – nearly 30 years after presiding over the hearing in which her name was dragged through the mud.

Biden also chuckled at voter concerns that he "didn't represent the future," touting both his foreign policy record – which included bombing Serbia and invading Iraq – and his domestic record, which included supporting Bill Clinton's notorious 1994 crime bill and attempting to ban digital encryption.

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