A former senior adviser to President Barack Obama was among those who ridiculed Joe Biden on Sunday, after the former vice president celebrated his friendship with Obama by tweeting an image of a friendship bracelet.
“Happy #BestFriendsDay to my friend, @BarackObama,” Biden wrote.
“This is a joke, right?” David Axelrod tweeted in response to Biden’s original tweet, which many claimed was Biden’s forced attempt to associate himself with the former president.
This is a joke, right?
— David Axelrod (@davidaxelrod) June 9, 2019
Biden claimed in his memoirs that Obama repeatedly discouraged from running in 2016, believing that Biden’s entrance into the race would unnecessarily “rock the boat.”
“In January 2015 the president was convinced I could not beat Hillary, and he worried that a long primary fight would split the party and leave the Democratic nominee vulnerable in the general election,” Biden wrote.
Axelrod, who was the chief strategist for Obama’s presidential campaigns, has expressed skepticism at Biden’s ability to maintain his momentum through 2020, either, especially given his flip-flop on the Hyde Amendment, which prohibits the federal funding of abortion.
“His rollout was flawless in my view, and he’s had a very solid spring,” Axelrod said of Biden’s campaign Friday on CNN. “But this underscores questions that people have had about whether he can go the distance.”
Backtracking from his moderate, decades-long stance on the Hyde Amendment, Biden acknowledged Thursday that “times have changed,” and that he supports its repeal.
Former Texas Rep. Beto O’Rourke on Sunday asserted that there is likely little room in the Democratic Party for a candidate “who would not believe in a woman’s right to choose and the ability to stand, and the mandate for us to stand with women in each and every instance.”
