Rolling Stone Interviewer: Biden's Serious About 2016

Rolling Stone is out with an interview of Joe Biden in which the VP talks about everything from gun laws (he's confident on background checks), his relationship with President Obama (close—"I spend an average of four to five hours a day with him, every single day") to book recommendations (River of Doubt, by Candice Millard). But what about that other issue, the one involving the 2016 presidential race? Interviewer Douglas Brinkley assesses:

• "My takeaway from my one-hour White House interview with Joe Biden is that he must be considering a presidential run. There will be too much Obama-era unfinished business—implementing the Affordable Care Act, fighting for climate-change initiatives, for example—for Biden to throw in the towel."

And what about Hillary Clinton? Don't discount Biden's chances, writes Brinkley. She would rout him among women, but "it's not inconceivable to think that labor unions, environmentalists, African-Americans, LGBT voters and small-business owners will prefer the hypercaffeinated, hard-charging vice president." In some sense, Clinton would be running as a successor to her husband, but Biden would be a successor to Obama, "promising to expand on the record of his last two terms." Click to read the full interview. (More Joe Biden stories.)