Joe Biden mistakenly said at a Delaware Democratic Party dinner that he's "running" — and the crowd went wild https://t.co/BoS7LXjo0b pic.twitter.com/NQBMtsSKlt

— CBS News (@CBSNews) March 17, 2019

DELAWARE — Former Vice President Joe Biden accidentally announced his 2020 presidential candidacy and instantly tried to take it back.

The so-called gaffe before a cheering crowd at a Delaware Democratic Party dinner Saturday night is the latest breadcrumb offered by Biden, who’s been teasing his candidacy for months. Though the two-time presidential contender hasn’t made his campaign official, he leads in the polls, beating out President Donald Trump and a field of more than a dozen Democratic hopefuls.
Biden ‘accidentally’ announced his candidacy while attempting to burnish his progressive bonafides.

Biden boasted that he has “the most progressive record of anybody running.”
He then corrected himself, insisting he meant to say “anybody who would run,” adding “I didn’t mean it,” reported NBC News.

The coy contender went on to attack Trump as leader who’s abdicated America’s leadership role and one who thrives on dividing his own people. At the same time, he defended himself from a common critique from the left that he’s too chummy with Republicans.

“The only thing strong enough to tear America apart is America itself and we’ve seen its start,” he said of the country’s deep political divisions.

Early Democratic polls show Biden leading in a hypothetical race with Trump and progressive stars Bernie Sanders and Beto O’Rourke. But as the Democratic Party is pulled to the left by its surging progressive wing, questions remain about whether the famously centrist Biden can win the primary. As rumors of his candidacy heat up, Biden has faced criticism from his own party for his past opposition to desegregation through bussing and for his support of the Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act of 1994, a law largely blamed for the uptick in mass incarceration. For party leaders, however, the Scranton, Pennsylvania-native holds appeal for his presumed ability to win over the rust-belt that gave Trump his 2016 victory.

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