by Hans Izaak Kriek*
It took a long time before former President Barack Obama endorsed Joe Biden’s White House bid, formally throwing his support behind his former vice president and the now-presumptive Democratic nominee.
“If there’s one thing we’ve learned as a country from moments of great crisis, it’s that the spirit of looking out for one another can’t be restricted to our homes or our workplaces, or our neighborhoods or our houses of worship. It also has to be reflected in our national government,” Obama said in a nearly 12-minute video message that touched on the coronavirus pandemic.
“The kind of leadership that’s guided by knowledge and experience, honesty and humility, empathy and grace,” he continued. “That kind of leadership doesn’t just belong in our state capitols and mayor’s offices. It belongs in the White House. And that’s why I’m so proud to endorse Joe Biden for president of the United States.”
The announcement marks Obama’s highly anticipated foray into the 2020 race after declining to back a candidate during the primary contest, and comes just one day after Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders also endorsed Biden’s candidacy.
Obama’s endorsement, while widely expected, also represents a new phase in the general election campaign against President Donald Trump, unlocking the Democratic Party’s most powerful surrogate for Biden at a time when his campaign has struggled to cultivate momentum amid the outbreak of the coronavirus in the U.S. Although Biden maintained during the primary that he had asked Obama not to endorse any particular Democratic candidate, insisting that “whoever wins this nomination should win it on their own merits”, he relentlessly invoked his eight years of service under the former president and close personal relationship with him to court voters.
Biden’s efforts to align himself so closely with Obama, even as the previous administration’s policies came under occasional scrutiny from the party’s left flank, were ultimately successful in propelling him past more progressive rivals to become Democrats’ pick to challenge Trump in November.
Weighing in on the endorsement, Brad Parscale, Trump’s reelection campaign manager, asserted that Obama “spent much of the last five years urging Joe Biden not to run for president out of fear that he would embarrass himself,” and now “has no other choice but to support him.”
“Obama was right in the first place: Biden is a bad candidate who will embarrass himself and his party,” Parscale said in a statement. “President Trump will destroy him.”
Trump’s reaction: “In August, it was reported that Barack Obama told ‘Sleepy Joe’, “You don’t have to do this Joe, you really don’t.”
And now Obama has publicly endorsed him. It took 355 days for Obama endorse Biden, it’s obvious that even he didn’t want his former VP to become the next president, or else he wouldn’t have waited until Joe was the last man standing, now pathetic.”
The president said: “But, I can’t ignore the fact that ‘Sleepy Joe’ just got back-to-back endorsements from Crazy Bernie and Obama to ignite the Liberal Mob, which is why I’ve activated a 24 hour cash surge to get us back on track.
As a historically crowded and diverse field of White House hopefuls competed for the Democratic nomination over the past year, Obama’s public statements and remarks on the state of the race were closely parsed for potential clues regarding his preference of candidate and hopes for the future of the party. When Biden officially entered the race last April, the former president’s spokeswoman said Obama “relied on the vice president’s knowledge, insight and judgment throughout both campaigns and the entire presidency,” and added that the two men ‘forged a special bond over the last 10 years’.
Sanders also makes it official: It’s Biden for president
Joe Biden became the Democratic Party’s indisputable presidential nominee Monday when Bernie Sanders paid a surprise visit to the former vice president’s live cast and issued an unexpected and full-throated endorsement.
Sanders, who formally suspended his campaign last week, said he needed everyone, not just his supporters, to back Biden and make sure that President Trump becomes a one-term president.
“Today, I am asking all Americans; I’m asking every Democrat; I’m asking every independent; I’m asking a lot of Republicans, to come together in this campaign to support your candidacy, which I endorse, to make certain that we defeat somebody who I believe is the most dangerous president in the modern history of this country,” Sanders told Biden.
“I will do all that I can to see that that happens, Joe,” Sanders pledged, after calling Trump a racist, a sexist, a xenophobe and a religious bigot who botched the nation’s initial response to the coronavirus pandemic.
“I want to thank you for that. It’s a big deal,” Biden said. “Your endorsement means a great deal, a great deal to me.”
Sanders’ endorsement was no mere formality. Though the Vermont senator formally suspended his campaign last week, Sanders did not say he endorsed Biden, nor did he call on his dedicated followers to vote for his former opponent. Sanders also pledged to hang on to his delegates, which caused some Democrats to fear the primary could wind up repeating the mistakes of 2016, when acrimony marked the relationship between Sanders and Hillary Clinton in 2016. Many Democrats believe that bitter divide played a role in her loss to Trump in November.
That rancor between Clinton and Sanders surfaced again this year when the former senator and secretary of state made headlines during the primary for saying “nobody” likes Sanders.
But Biden did. He always made sure to be friendly and respectful with Sanders, who repaid the favor, sometimes too much, Sanders advisers fretted when he refused to bludgeon Biden on the debate stage.
Biden repeated those words about Bernie’s credibility as he lavished praise on his former rival Monday. Sanders’ endorsement gave Biden a chance to break into the news cycle with a headline-grabbing announcement, a rarity in recent weeks as he, along with Sanders, remains stuck at home during the pandemic as reports about the contagion and the president’s response to it suck up all the media oxygen.
Woman broadens claims against Biden to include sexual assault
A woman who briefly worked as an aide for former Vice President Joe Biden in the 1990s has expanded her claims that he harassed her to now include an instance of sexual assault, which Biden’s campaign denies and says is untrue.
The woman, Tara Reade, first made the assault allegation public last month, saying in a podcast interview that Biden, then a veteran senator from Delaware and a powerful committee chairman, penetrated her with his fingers under her skirt when she brought him a gym bag in spring 1993. At the time, she was a staff assistant in his office on Capitol Hill.
NBC News has spoken with Reade multiple times since she came forward with the assault allegation on March 25 and has also spoken with five people with whom Reade said she shared varying degrees of detail over time. Three of those people said on the record that they do not recall any such conversation with Reade.
A fourth person, who spoke on the condition of anonymity, said Reade told her about the alleged assault at the time. That person, who asked that her name be withheld by NBC News for fear of negatively affecting her business, said she remembers Reade’s telling her that she spoke with superiors in Biden’s office about harassment but not the assault. She also recalled that Reade told her she filed a formal written complaint with a Senate personnel office at the time.
Former Biden staffers, including his former chief of staff Ted Kaufman and his longtime executive assistant Marianne Baker, were both named by Reade as having been told about harassment at the time, but both said they have no recollection of the claim. Biden’s campaign has said the alleged assault "absolutely did not happen."
In a new statement Sunday, the campaign pointed to his record of advocating for survivors and his authoring of the Violence Against Women Act.
"He firmly believes that women have a right to be heard, and heard respectfully," deputy campaign manager Kate Bedingfield said. "Such claims should also be diligently reviewed by an independent press. What is clear about this claim: it is untrue.
Reade said she feels abandoned by a party that she had long considered herself a part of and stymied by circumstances that she feels leave some people reluctant to take her claims seriously.
There will become more about Biden’s behavior and the story will be continued.
*International political commentator for European Business Review and editor-in-chief at Kriek media International
By: N. Peter Kramer
