Biden to meet with AFL-CIO chief as he ponders White House run

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[August 28, 2015]  WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. Vice President Joe Biden will meet on Thursday with AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka as he explores whether to launch a run for the White House in 2016, a source familiar with the meeting said.

Biden, who failed in two previous presidential bids, has been huddling with advisers and senior Democratic Party figures before he decides whether to jump into the race for the presidential nomination against front-runner Hillary Clinton.

Clinton has struggled to overcome fallout from her use of a private email server while working as the nation's top diplomat.

The AFL-CIO labor federation, an umbrella group for 56 member unions representing more than 12.5 million workers, has not made an endorsement in the Democratic race.

In a conference call with Democratic National Committee members on Wednesday, Biden said he was giving the race a lot of thought but was trying to gauge whether he had the energy and commitment for it.

"If I were to announce to run, I have to be able to commit to all of you that I would be able to give it my whole heart and my whole soul, and right now both are pretty well banged up and we're trying to figure out that issue," Biden said in an audio clip aired by CNN.

Biden's eldest son, Beau Biden, a former Delaware attorney general, died of cancer in May at age 46. It was another family tragedy for the vice president, who lost his first wife and his daughter in a car accident shortly after first winning election to the U.S. Senate from Delaware in 1972.

(Reporting by Amanda Becker; Editing by Jeffrey Benkoe)

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