Barack Obama has endorsed his former vice-president and the presumptive Democratic Party nominee Joe Biden for president of the United States.
Barack Obama has endorsed his former vice-president and the presumptive Democratic Party nominee Joe Biden for president of the United States.
“Joe has the character and the experience to guide us through one of our darkest times and heal us through a long recovery,” Obama said in a statement.
“And I know he’ll surround himself with good people – experts, scientists, military officials who actually know how to run the government and care about doing a good job running the government, and know how to work with our allies, and who will always put the American people’s interests above their own.”
Obama had stayed above the fray in the primary, rarely speaking out about intraparty fighting. The former president offered his private counsel to any Democratic presidential contender who asked for it, but made no efforts to bolster any one candidate’s campaign — including Biden’s, despite their long history.
On the campaign trail, Biden often referred to himself as an “Obama-Biden Democrat,” and was sometimes criticized by other candidates for trying to campaign off of Obama’s accomplishments.
“Mr. Vice-President, you can’t have it both ways,” Sen. Cory Booker said in a debate last year. “You invoke President Obama more than anybody in this campaign. You can’t do it when it’s convenient and then dodge it when it’s not.”
When surprising Biden with by presenting him with the Medal of Freedom in January 2017, Obama praised his vice-president for his work on the economic stimulus, middle-class issues and curbi