Biden Running For President

And now there are four.

In an appearance on NBC's Meet The Press Sunday, Senator Joe Biden (D-DE) announced that he will be a candidate for the 2008 Democratic presidential nomination.

"I am running for president," Biden told host Tim Russert. "I’m filing for an exploratory committee before the month is out."

Biden is a six-term Senator and, far more important to his presidential aspirations, he has the capacity to be in the front row of American politics this year as the new Chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, where he will begin three to six weeks of hearings tomorrow on the Bush administration's conduct of the Iraq war.

If the investigations conducted by his committee are substantive -- and especially if they dig up yet further wrongdoing by the White House -- Biden will command national attention, have his face in the news many nights and provide a massive boost for his presidential campaign.

Biden ran for president once before in 1988 before withdrawing due to medical problems and is arguable the most influential Congressional Democrat on foreign policy issues, which may prove to be a major factor in the 2008 race.

In addition to Biden, former Senator John Edwards, Congressman Dennis Kucinich and Iowa Governor Tom Vilsack have declared that they too are seeking the Democratic presidential nomination.