Barack Obama endorsed his former VP, Joe Biden, in a video posted on YouTube Tuesday that also took aim at Republicans and promoted a progressive agenda he said was the most progressive of any major party nominee in history. He also suggested Biden could better handle a pandemic.
The former President called on Americans to rise up in a great awakening "against a politics that too often has been characterized by corruption, carelessness, self-dealing, disinformation, ignorance and just plain meanness."
[embed]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tJAPfahus_U[/embed]
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He said that would take Americans of all political stripes.
Obama was widely expected to make the endorsement after Bernie Sanders bowed out of the race and then gave his full support to Biden Monday (April 13).
After providing a COVID-19 pep talk calling for unit and community, Obama said picking Biden had been one of the best decisions he had ever made. He said leadership belongs in the White House, not just in the governor's and mayor's office, an obvious response to the current President's criticism of local officials getting together to plan for re-opening the economy when possible.
He said Biden had rescued the auto industry and saved millions of jobs. He also suggested Biden would be a good choice in leadership during a time of pandemic. "Joe helped me manage H1N1 and help keep the Ebola epidemic from becoming the type of pandemic we're seeing now." He was perhaps anticipating the "don't change horses in midstream" argument some Republicans might offer up for keeping Trump in office.
He said Biden would surround himself with experts who "actually know how to run the government" and work with our allies "and always put the American people's interests above their own. Obama left it to the viewer to draw whatever distinctions they wanted with the current President.
Obama also took some time to praise Sanders for trying to make America "a fairer, more just, more equitable society." He said Sanders ideas would be "critical to moving America in a direction of progress and hope."
He also trumpeted an expansive progressive agenda, sounding almost more like a presidential candidate than a former President. He said Republicans aren't interested in progress, but power, and said they had "denied the science of pandemics" as they had climate change.
He also said the Republicans had a "propaganda network with little regard for the truth." But he also said pandemics have a way of cutting through the noise and spin and reminded the American people that good government and science and facts matter and "the rule of law" matters.
