Joe Biden sounded like a presidential candidate in Iowa Thursday, even as skepticism mounts about the vice president entering the 2016 race for the White House.
In 90-minute remarks at Drake University in Iowa, home of the first-in-the-nation caucuses, the vice president sought to establish battle lines for the 2016 contest.
“Own what we have done. Stand for what we have done,” Biden told prospective 2016 candidates, possibly including himself.
“I call it sticking with what works,” Biden said in Des Moines.
Biden’s trip to Iowa was billed as a way to promote the Obama administration’s economic policies, particularly the White House’s plan to raise taxes on wealthier Americans and corporations — but the vice president openly embraced the 2016 chatter.
At one point, he said the 2016 presidential candidates’ policies would determine the “economic opportunity” for Americans during the next 10 to 15 years.
“Are we going to continue this resurgence or are we going to return to policies that have failed the country in the past?” Biden asked the crowd of college students.
“Quite frankly, that’s what the next election is all about,” the vice president said, comparing the “Obama-Biden” economic policies to those espoused by Republicans.
The vice president went on to rip the growing wealth disparity between the top “1 percent” and the middle class, attributing the trend to Bush-era economic policies rather than the actions taken by the current White House.
He called for public financing of presidential elections, saying it would “take money out of the equation.” Biden did not mention that President Obama raised a record amount of money in two presidential races by eschewing public financing.
Defending the president’s executive action on immigration, Biden insisted that the United States was the “only country in the world that isn’t xenophobic.”
Already, Obama has displayed an increasingly populist tone, a message the party’s next presidential candidate will likely run with.
As for Biden, most Democrats assume that he won’t enter the 2016 race if former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton declares her candidacy.
Clinton has already established a campaign-in-waiting, while Biden has mostly remained on the sidelines. Party veterans doubt that Biden would mount a serious challenge to the better-funded and more-organized Clinton the closer it gets to 2016.
Regardless, Biden on Thursday was clearly basking in the 2016 talk, focusing extensively on his blue-collar roots.
“I know I’m always referred to as Middle Class Joe,” Biden joked, saying that made him “supposedly not sophisticated” in Washington circles.
