Former White House host Barack Obama endorsed Joe Biden, his former deputy, as a U.S. presidential candidate on Tuesday. The 77-year-old former vice president no longer has competitors in the competition for the Democratic Party’s nomination for her candidate in the November elections.
/MICHAEL REYNOLDS /Reuters
“If there is one thing we have learned as a state in times of great crisis, it is that the attitude of taking care of each other cannot be limited to our homes, jobs, settlements and temples. It must also be in our government,” Obama said in a nearly 12-minute video posted online.
He added that leadership is needed in the White House, based on “knowledge, experience, integrity, humility, empathy and grace.” “And that’s why I’m honored to endorse Joe Biden as US president,” the former president, who rarely publicly said on political issues, said.
Biden was vice president at Obama from 2009 to 2017. Despite initial differences in the Democratic primaries in 2008, political relations were later often compared to fraternal ones. At the end of his second term, Biden was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom by his superior.
So far, Obama – as reported by the US media – has supported Biden behind the scenes. He warned the Democratic Party m.in. before going too far to the left, which was interpreted as his opposition to the progressive wing of the grouping. Biden is considered a politician of another party faction with more centrist views.
On Monday, less than a week after withdrawing from the race for the White House, Sen. Bernie Sanders was the latest of Biden’s rivals in the fight for the party’s nomination to endorse him as the Democratic nominee in the November presidential election.
Sanders said he would no longer make up for the former vice president’s lead over him in the primaries. Biden owes success to them to a large extent to the mass support of African Americans. Many of them associate him with the Obama presidency, considering him a friend of the former president.
Sanders, who preachs socialist views, enjoys a lot of support among young voters. Biden has been making gestures toward the party’s progressive wing for several weeks now. He flattered sanders, saying that he “not only campaigned, but created a movement.”
The former vice president promised that some of the senator’s ideas from Vermont would be included in his agenda. Already among his demands is m.in. tripling the child tax credit, free higher education for most Americans, or a minimum wage of $15 an hour.
Biden’s presidential nomination in the presidential election is likely to be held in August. This month – due to the coronavirus – the convention of this grouping was postponed.
