Sabotage? Looks Like Obama Just Blew a Hole in Joe Biden's Presidential Aspirations
Voters are fed up with the same old establishment politicians squabbling for power — and even Barack Obama knows it.
Earlier this month, the former president shared his views about the future of the Democrat party, and his tone was surprisingly pessimistic when it came to current liberal leadership. While speaking in Hawaii, Obama seemed to suggest that he wasn’t a fan of established names within his own party.
“We have a deficit of leadership, and we need new blood,” he said at a private reception, according to the Honolulu Civil Beat newspaper.
The 44th president didn’t mention anybody by name, but on Sunday the widely-respected news magazine The Hill reported that his “new blood” comment wasn’t taken very well by one particular 2020 hopeful.
“Sources close to both men … acknowledge recent remarks like the one Obama made this week in Hawaii represent a sort of threat to Biden,” The Hill reporter Amie Parnes wrote.
Adding to the potential rift between Biden and Obama is the fact that the former president didn’t back his own vice president in the 2016 race and discouraged Biden from running.
At the same time, Obama recently met with Texas liberal Beto O’Rourke in a move that’s being seen as connected to his “new blood” comment.
“But coming on the heels of Obama’s meeting with former Rep. Beto O’Rourke, a rising Democratic star who most political observers see as competing with Biden for a slice of the primary electorate, it also sent a signal to the wider political world,” The Hill explained.
“The remark and the burgeoning flirtation between Obama’s political network and O’Rourke also stings Biden given the 2016 campaign, when Obama backed Hillary Clinton and nudged the vice president away from the race,” that outlet continued.
It’s hard to know what Obama and Biden think privately, but the former vice president opened up about the sometimes rocky relationship with Obama in his recent book.
“Biden wrote that Obama and his team told him he couldn’t beat Clinton,” Parnes summarized about Biden’s memoir about politics and life.
“The president was not encouraging (about me running),” Biden wrote in that book, “Promise Me, Dad: A Year of Hope, Hardship, and Purpose.”
Adding insult to injury, Obama has reportedly met with several possible 2020 candidates including Elizabeth Warren and Cory Booker, while Biden didn’t seem to be included in that group.
“Joe Biden, however, is said to have been less than thrilled” about Obama’s recent actions and comments, Vanity Fair reported not long ago.
“Obamaworld insiders describe the former vice president as upset—not specifically by Obama’s conversation with O’Rourke, but by the former president’s willingness to talk to other plausible Democratic contenders while Biden is still deciding whether to run himself,” the magazine said.
But it isn’t just the last president who is lukewarm on a Biden presidency. As we reported, polling from The Hill recently revealed that “none of the above” was the top choice when voters were asked about various names for 2020.
35 percent of respondents named Biden as their top choice, not exactly an outstanding result. It certainly doesn’t look like the stars are aligning for would-be President Biden.
Conservative Tribune reached out to Barack Obama’s office for a comment, but as of publication time did not receive a response.
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