CEDAR RAPIDS, Iowa — Joe Biden touted Barack Obama’s legacy during his first campaign event in Iowa, signaling that the former vice president will use his time in the White House as an asset on the trail, even if he can’t land an endorsement from his former boss.
“Let me say something. The fact of the matter is that Barack Obama is an extraordinary man. A measure of a man or woman’s worth or courage is based on how they react to overwhelming crisis,” Biden said to a group of roughly 200 in Cedar Rapids on Monday afternoon. “I watched this guy, everything but locusts landed on his desk. That’s not a joke. He is incredible. His dignity, his decency.”
The riff about Obama came as Biden was praising the Affordable Care Act and promising voters that he would protect the bill from Republican attempts to undermine it should he be elected president.
“We made historical progress, we extended coverage to 22 million Americans who didn’t have it … we [should] no longer have an argument about whether healthcare is a privilege or a right, it should be a right.”
Obama remains wildly popular among Democratic voters, and much of Biden’s front-runner status in the 2020 Democratic primary race can be explained in part by the name recognition he gained as vice president.
Yet Obama decided not to endorse Biden in the 2020 race, creating an awkward tension over just how far Biden can go speaking about his legacy serving in the executive branch.
Since announcing, Biden has used images of the two men in a campaign video and on social media in order to highlight their close relationship.
“There wasn’t a day. There wasn’t a single day where I wasn’t proud to be with him,” Biden said.
