President Obama endorses Joe Biden

For­mer Pres­i­dent Barack Oba­ma has for­mal­ly endorsed his for­mer vice pres­i­dent, Joe Biden. Oba­ma, who has avoid­ed pub­licly favor­ing any can­di­date in the Democ­rats’ pri­ma­ry process, came out in sup­port of Biden a day after Bernie Sanders appeared on a joint live stream with the for­mer Vice Pres­i­dent to pledge his sup­port, defin­i­tive­ly end­ing the 2020 Demo­c­ra­t­ic pres­i­den­tial primary.

On Tues­day morn­ing, Biden for Pres­i­dent released a twelve-minute video of the nominee’s for­mer boss, in which Oba­ma praised Biden’s expe­ri­ence, per­son­al­i­ty and lead­er­ship skills: “Choos­ing Joe to be my vice pres­i­dent was one of the best deci­sions I ever made, and he became a close friend.” Oba­ma repeat­ed many of the talk­ing points that the Biden cam­paign has been push­ing since he entered the race last year, recount­ing the var­i­ous pro­grams that Biden man­aged as vice pres­i­dent, his work­ing class roots, and his expe­ri­ence in inter­na­tion­al affairs.

Oba­ma also assured view­ers that Biden would restore com­pe­tence and dig­ni­ty to the White House by appoint­ing offi­cials who “know how to gov­ern” and will put the Amer­i­can people’s inter­ests before their own – an obvi­ous dig at the cur­rent incom­pe­ten­cy and cor­rup­tion of Trump’s admin­is­tra­tion (although Oba­ma refrained from men­tion­ing the incum­bent by name through­out the video).

Oba­ma also made sure to cred­it the oth­er can­di­dates in the nom­i­na­tion race, sin­gling out Bernie Sanders for par­tic­u­lar praise: “Bernie’s an Amer­i­can orig­i­nal, a man who has devot­ed his life to giv­ing voice to work­ing people’s hopes, dreams and frus­tra­tions.” Con­tin­u­ing the Biden campaign’s efforts to reach out to dis­en­chant­ed pro­gres­sives, Oba­ma argued that Biden has the “most pro­gres­sive plat­form” of any Demo­c­ra­t­ic pres­i­den­tial nom­i­nee in history.

For all his praise of Bernie Sanders and his pro­gres­sive pol­i­tics, the for­mer pres­i­dent was report­ed­ly a key fig­ure in per­suad­ing Sanders to drop out of the race when it became appar­ent that the Sen­a­tor from Ver­mont would be unable to catch up to Biden’s del­e­gate count. Oba­ma has spent almost a year work­ing behind the scenes to strength­en the Demo­c­ra­t­ic Par­ty up and down the bal­lot in 2020, and ensur­ing uni­ty among the party’s diverse factions.

Obama’s endorse­ment came the same day as the results from the high­ly con­tro­ver­sial Wis­con­sin pri­ma­ry came in. Biden won the state eas­i­ly, but a more sur­pris­ing result came down-bal­lot, with vot­ers elect­ing a lib­er­al judge over a Trump-backed right-wing incum­bent to the state Supreme Court.

This result came in spite of an elec­tion held under the cloud of COVID-19 and rigged heav­i­ly in favor of Repub­li­cans by the GOP-con­trolled state legislature.

Wis­con­sin was a key state in the 2016 elec­tion, one of three nar­row vic­to­ries that swung the elec­toral col­lege in Don­ald Trump’s favor.

The fact that a lib­er­al under­dog can­di­date can win against all the odds bodes well for Democ­rats look­ing for­ward to November’s gen­er­al election.