Obama, Fearing Biden Loss to Trump, Is on the Phone to Strategize
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The former president and the current one are now on the same page about Joseph R. Biden Jr.’s political future. It was not always that way.
By Katie Rogers
Katie Rogers covers the Biden White House and reported from Washington, where she spoke with over a dozen people for this article.
As the election approaches, President Biden is making regular calls to former President Barack Obama to catch up on the race or to talk about family. But Mr. Obama is making calls of his own to Jeffrey D. Zients, the White House chief of staff, and to top aides at the Biden campaign to strategize and relay advice.
This level of engagement illustrates Mr. Obama’s support for Mr. Biden, but also what one of his senior aides characterized as Mr. Obama’s grave concern that Mr. Biden could lose to former President Donald J. Trump. The aide, who was not authorized to speak publicly, said that Mr. Obama has “always” been worried about a Biden loss. And so, the aide added, he is prepared to “eke it out” alongside his former vice president in an election that could come down to slim margins in a handful of states.
Perhaps for the first time, the two are on the same page about Mr. Biden’s future. In a sign of things to come, they are to appear together, with former President Bill Clinton, at a major fund-raiser for the Biden campaign at Radio City Music Hall in New York on Thursday.
It was not always this way.
In 2015, as Mr. Biden was grieving the loss of his eldest son, Beau, and contemplating running for the presidency, it was Mr. Obama who gently suggested that it was not his time. In a memoir, “Promise Me, Dad,” Mr. Biden wrote that Mr. Obama told him that if he “could appoint anyone to be president for the next eight years,” it would have been Mr. Biden. The vice president wrote that “the mere possibility of a presidential campaign, which Beau wanted, gave us purpose and hope — a way to defy the fates.”
But after discussing the stakes with Mr. Obama, he took himself out of contention and stepped aside for Hillary Clinton, seen by the Obama White House as the far stronger candidate. The decision bred distrust and lasting resentment among some of Mr. Biden’s aides. Several of them work in the White House today, and they believe that Mr. Obama and his advisers sidelined Mr. Biden, whom they think could have changed the course of history and beaten Mr. Trump in 2016.
In 2019, when Mr. Biden entered the race against then-President Trump, Mr. Obama withheld his endorsement until after the Democratic primary, though he privately worked to clear a path for Mr. Biden. He also gave his blessing for the Biden campaign to use their interactions in the Obama White House in campaign materials, including footage of when Mr. Obama surprised his vice president with the Presidential Medal of Freedom shortly before leaving office.
