Joe Biden Skips Thanksgiving in Nantucket; Meets With Martin O’Malley.
'For the last four decades, Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. has made a tradition of spending Thanksgiving with his family in Nantucket, Mass.
But just six months after the death of his son Beau, he could not bring himself to go to the island this year, and so he is skipping the holiday altogether.
Instead, the vice president is heading to Europe for official meetings. He leaves Tuesday afternoon for Zagreb, Croatia, where on Wednesday he will participate in an annual gathering of leaders from the former Yugoslavia and meet with Donald Tusk, president of the European Council.
From there, Mr. Biden will fly to Rome, where on Friday he will meet with Prime Minister Matteo Renzi of Italy and Archbishop Paul Gallagher, effectively the foreign minister for the Vatican. The vice president will return to Washington on Sunday. . .
On Tuesday morning, Mr. Biden met privately with Martin O’Malley, one of two remaining rivals to Hillary Rodham Clinton in the Democratic presidential contest, according to people briefed on the meeting.
Mr. O’Malley met with Mr. Biden at the Naval Observatory, the official residence of the vice president. (Mr. Biden met recently with the other Democratic candidate, Senator Bernie Sanders, the independent from Vermont who has become the main opponent to Mrs. Clinton in the polls.)
Mr. O’Malley, the former Maryland governor, has been struggling to gain traction in the polls and attention to his candidacy. An aide to the vice president confirmed the meeting, noting that Mr. Biden had said he would meet with whoever asked him.
Mr. Biden spent many weeks considering his own challenge to Mrs. Clinton, but ultimately decided that time had passed him by. But he has also made clear he is not yet ready to endorse Mrs. Clinton, who leads in most national and state surveys.'
http://www.nytimes.com/politics/first-draft/2015/11/24/a-grieving-joe-biden-skips-thanksgiving-in-nantucket/?_r=0