Buried in NYT Piece: Obama Doubted Biden Campaign Before He Even Ran
Poor Joe Biden.
Everyone already knew the former vice president was a sad case when he staked out his place in the 2020 presidential election as one of the only members of the modern Democratic Party still willing to carry water for an ineffective, scandal-ridden Obama administration.
Biden’s case grows ever sadder, however, when one realizes he will likely continue to do so for the remainder of his time on the campaign trail without so much as a nod — at least during the primaries — from the man he so proudly defends: former President Barack Obama.
In fact, according to The New York Times, a nod or endorsement from Obama likely isn’t even on the 77-year-old Pennsylvania native’s radar at this point, considering insider accounts suggest the former commander in chief made it abundantly clear he didn’t necessarily think Biden should run in the first place.
Obama has communicated his frustration that Biden’s closest advisers are too old and out of touch with the current political climate, urging him to include more younger aides. @GlennThrush https://t.co/H9mbHapPJb
— Peter Baker (@peterbakernyt) August 17, 2019
Buried in an August report from The Times, sources familiar with the matter claimed Obama, in more than a half dozen meetings with Biden earlier this year, “took pains to cast his doubts about the campaign” before it ever got off the ground.
“You don’t have to do this, Joe, you really don’t,” Obama is said to have told Biden on one occasion.
But it certainly cannot be said that the former president’s reluctance with regard to Biden is held in hopes of playing it neutral for the entirety of the 2020 cycle.
Especially not with Politico reporting that Obama has, for months on end, welcomed just about every 2020 Democratic presidential candidate to his office in Washington, D.C., so he could offer advice.
At times, aides said the meetings simply represented a chance for the former president to gauge the field and see who might best be able to take on Republican President Donald Trump.
Other times, however, Obama “offers candid advice about his visitors’ strengths and weaknesses,” Politico reported.
“Occasionally, he can be cutting,” Politico reporter Ryan Lizza wrote.
“With one candidate, [Obama] pointed out that during his own 2008 campaign, he had an intimate bond with the electorate, especially in Iowa, that he no longer has.”
“Then he added, ‘And you know who really doesn’t have it? Joe Biden.'”
Now, all this may amount to no more than manufactured drama.
Biden, for his part, has on numerous occasions publicly claimed that he never sought, nor did he want, an endorsement from the president he served alongside.
“I want to earn this on my own.” Joe Biden tells 60 Minutes he asked President Obama not to endorse him in his run for White House https://t.co/QYKl8R0G9y pic.twitter.com/p8fAgQzBaG
— 60 Minutes (@60Minutes) October 27, 2019
But frankly, that is incredibly hard to believe.
I don’t know that there has been a vice president-turned-presidential candidate in the last 60 years who did not want the endorsement of his predecessor — save perhaps for President Gerald Ford following Watergate.
There is a sort of unspoken two-way street of support between former presidents and members of their administration who later seek the office.
A president is driven to see his legacy carried on by a worthy, similar successor — to see the American people so pleased with the job he has done that they are desperate to elect the next best thing.
That successor is, in turn, motivated to express extra support for the carrying on of said legacy under the expectation their well-liked predecessor will provide a campaign-boosting endorsement.
Reason would dictate such motivations and expectations must be twice as strong within Biden, who, for all intents and purposes, has made himself out to be the unquestioned standard-bearer for Obama-like “moderacy” within the Democratic Party in light of the new left’s hostile 2018 takeover.
And if Obama is unwilling as some are claiming to go to bat for one of his only defenders in a party dead set on separating itself from the Obama legacy, it may be safe to assume Biden’s presidential aspirations are dead on arrival.
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