Former President Barack Obama's "complicated" relationship with former Vice President Joe Biden, which caused "hairline fractures in the Democratic foundation," has colored his 2020 presidential campaign, according to Politico.
Biden "was loyal, I think, to Obama in every way in terms of defending and standing by him, even probably when he disagreed with what Obama was doing," former secretary of Defense Leon Panetta said. "To some extent, [he] oftentimes felt that that loyalty was not being rewarded."
Politico notes, during the Obama administration, "young White House aides frequently mocked Biden's gaffes and lack of discipline in comparison to the almost clerical Obama. They would chortle at how Biden, like an elderly uncle at Thanksgiving, would launch into extended monologues that everyone had heard before."
By the time Obama's second term neared its end, the former president "had been subtly weighing in against" Biden launching his own bid for the White House, the former vice president wrote in his 2017 book "Promise Me, Dad."
"I also believe he had concluded that Hillary Clinton was almost certain to be the nominee, which was good by him," Biden wrote, adding, "I knew a number of the president's former staffers, and even a few current ones, were putting a finger on the scale for Clinton."
"Both [Clinton] and her staff worked at that a great deal in trying to build" support in the Obama administration, Panetta said. "I think there was a certain attraction to someone that would certainly break ceilings and kind of create the same kind of precedent that he created when he became president . . . as opposed to supporting somebody who's kind of your more traditional politician and, you know, a white Irish Catholic guy."