Former Vice President Joe Biden hasn’t exactly been embraced with open arms by some former top advisers to his one-time boss, President Barack Obama.
David Axelrod, campaign strategist for Obama’s 2008 and 2012 wins, and Jen Psaki, who was communications director in the Obama White House, have been conspicuously cool to the 2020 White House aspirations of Biden, 76.
But on Wednesday night, Biden, a Delaware senator for 36 years before his two terms as vice president, raised money from a Washington, D.C., crowd that included many former Obama administration officials.
Jeff Zients, who was the chief economic adviser for the Obama White House, said the former vice president’s colleagues-turned-donors had assembled because they were at his side “in the Situation Room, some of us, in the Oval Office, across the country, across the world.”
“So we know firsthand that you are the person to lead and govern this country,” Zients told the crowd of about 90 people, 50 of whom were members of the Obama team, per a pool report.
Pete Rouse, who briefly served as White House chief of staff, described the turnout as evidence of the “high regard” with which Biden is held by “the extended Obama family.”
“I think that that message is not out as far as it should be. But this is certainly a demonstration of that,” Rouse said.
Former White House counsel Kathy Ruemmler added that next year’s presidential election came down to “character.”
“And there is no one who has the strength and the quality of character, no one like Joe Biden,” she said.
In response, Biden said the event was “like coming home” before taking shots at his 2020 Democratic rival Elizabeth Warren and President Trump. Biden claimed the Massachusetts senator was acting “like Barack was never president.”
“Think about the way we talk about it. ‘Well, those eight years, you know, were really left behind, we didn’t do anything.’ I mean, I don’t know where the hell they were. But here we are now where you have a proposal on a party that unless you’re for ‘Medicare for all,’ ‘You lack courage, you lack spine. You should be run in another primary.’ Give me a break, man,” Biden said.
The fundraiser wasn’t the only mini-Obama administration reunion of the evening. At a Democratic National Committee donor event in Bethesda, Maryland, Biden took part in a one-on-one conversation with the Democratic National Committee chairman Tom Perez, a former Obama administration labor secretary. As he welcomed Biden, Perez said working for Obama and Biden was “a privilege of a lifetime.”
The glowing reviews of Biden’s Obama years can be contrasted with the former president’s silence. Obama’s former No. 2 has repeatedly said he’s asked his old boss not to endorse him during the Democratic primary because he wants “to earn this on my own.”
“I asked him not to. He said, ‘OK.’ I think it’s better — I think he thinks it’s better for me. I have no doubt when I’m the nominee he’ll be out on the campaign trail for me,” Biden told CBS’s 60 Minutes in October of the 44th president.
