After more than a year of silence on the matter, Obama endorsed former Vice President Joe Biden in a video message on Tuesday.
“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 the 11-minute clip.
“I’m so proud to endorse Joe Biden for president of the United States. Choosing Joe to be my vice president was one of the best decisions I ever made, and he became a close friend. And I believe Joe has all the qualities we need in a president right now,” he added.
The endorsement only came after Biden was the last candidate standing. Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders dropped his presidential bid on April 8, saying he couldn’t “in good conscience continue to mount a campaign that cannot win.” Sanders officially threw his support behind Biden a week later, telling the former vice president via live-stream: “We need you in the White House. I will do all that I can to see that that happens, Joe.”
Obama’s endorsement echoed Sanders, as the former president urged unity in order to defeat President Donald Trump in November.
“Of course, Democrats may not always agree on every detail of the best way to bring about each and every one of these changes. But we do agree that they’re needed. And that only happens if we win this election,” Obama said.
Obama’s endorsement could help Biden build the same multiracial, cross-generation coalition that elected the 44th president twice. One of the former vice president’s biggest vulnerabilities is his lack of support among young voters. In the Democratic primary race, most millennial and Gen Z voters—which includes people under the age of 45—supported Sanders or Senator Elizabeth Warren.
Obama had stopped short of officially endorsing Biden during the crowded Democratic primary race. He also reportedly met with or offered advice to nearly half of the 2020 candidates, mostly in secret, including Elizabeth Warren, Cory Booker, Kamala Harris and Pete Buttigieg.
Biden repeatedly said he specifically asked Obama not to endorse him, telling reporters shortly after launching his campaign last April that “whoever wins this nomination should win it on their own merits.”
Obama’s silence didn’t stop Biden from making their relationship a focal point of his 2020 campaign, however. While other candidates criticized parts of Obama’s record, Biden had defended it—especially the Affordable Care Act.
Biden also dropped a $12 million advertising buy last month invoking the years the two spent together in the White House. The ad, titled “Service,” featured footage of Obama awarding Biden the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 2016.
“Joe’s candid, honest counsel made me a better president and a better commander in chief,” Obama said in the video. “All of this makes him the finest vice president we have ever seen. The best part is he’s nowhere close to finished.”
In his endorsement video, Obama also touted the accomplishments the two made during their eight years in the White House. He noted that Biden was a steady hand during times of crisis, such as the 2008 financial crisis and the Ebola epidemic.
“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 said.
With Sanders out of the running, Biden will almost certainly be the Democratic nominee appointed to take on President Donald Trump in November. During a recent coronavirus task force briefing, the president put out a theory about why it was taking Obama so long to endorse Biden.
“It does amaze me that President Obama has not supported Sleepy Joe. It just hasn’t happened. When is it going to happen?” Trump said. “He knows something that you don’t know. That I think I know. But you don’t know.”
“I don’t know why President Obama hasn’t supported Joe Biden a long time ago, there’s something he feels is wrong,” Trump suggested.
The president’s campaign manager Brad Parscale addressed Obama’s endorsement in a statement on Tuesday, claiming that the former president had “no other choice” but to support Biden and that Trump will still be victorious in November.
“Barack Obama spent much of the last five years urging Joe Biden not to run for president out of fear that he would embarrass himself,” Parscale said. “Now that Biden is the only candidate left in the Democrat field, Obama has no other choice but to support him. Even Bernie Sanders beat him to it. Obama was right in the first place: Biden is a bad candidate who will embarrass himself and his party. President Trump will destroy him.”
