Former President Barack Obama’s one-time adviser David Plouffe hammered the idea that his boss was the reason Joe Biden didn’t get to run for president in 2016.
Plouffe told the New York Times that Biden’s claims that Obama prevented him from making a 2016 presidential run were inaccurate.
“This notion that there was a red carpet available that, you know, Barack Obama blocked is just not based in reality,” Plouffe said. “Joe Biden would have run for president for the third time, for the nomination, would not have succeeded, and would have never been president.”
According to Plouffe, former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) were already considered strong contenders for the Democratic nomination when Biden was considering running for office.
Reports have circulated for years that Biden was frustrated with his former boss for boxing him out running in 2016.
During an interview with special counsel Robert Hur last October, Biden shared that he had the support of a lot of people for his presidential run, except Obama.
“I’m not — and not a mean thing to say. He just thought that she had a better shot of winning the presidency than I did,” he said, referring to Clinton.
In the 2020 election cycle, Obama did not weigh in on the contest or endorse Biden until after the Democratic primary.
Biden couldn’t extend Obama’s administration into a third consecutive term, but critics of the president have said Biden’s staffing and policy decisions are essentially a continuation of what began in 2008.
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The shadowy picture of Obama pulling Biden’s strings hasn’t been helped, with recent reports that the former president has been speaking with White House chief of staff Jeff Zients about how he thinks Biden should alter his reelection approach.
Most polls are showing a tie between presumptive Republican nominee Donald Trump and Biden, and some are showing a Trump lead. Compared to this time in 2020, Biden was leading Trump by about 6 percentage points in the FiveThirtyEight average. Polling shows Biden gaining on Trump in six battleground states with one Democratic strategist claiming that “the Biden bump is real”, the Guardian reported.