Biden signals return of both Obamas in his administration

FPI / January 29, 2020

Joe Biden on Tuesday hinted that both his former boss and the wife of his former boss could play leading roles in a Biden administration.

During a town hall in Muscatine, Iowa, a man in the audience asked the 77-year-old Democratic candidate: "Would you consider appointing Obama for the Supreme Court?"

"Yeah, I would, and I don't think he'd do it. He'd be a great Supreme Court justice," Biden responded.

"Second question is: Which Obama?" the man said.

"Well, I sure would like Michelle to be the vice president," Biden said and laughed. "They're both incredibly qualified people, I mean, and they're such decent, honorable people."

A Biden-Michelle Obama ticket would be a first in American politics. There has never been a presidential ticket that included a former first lady in the VP slot.

But first Biden must get the nomination. Three of the four latest Iowa polls have Bernie Sanders as the caucuses’ frontrunner: An Emerson College poll puts his support at 30 percent; a New York Times/Siena College poll places him at 25 percent, and a CBS News/YouGov poll puts him at 26 percent. Biden leads in the fourth poll, from Suffolk University/USA Today, with 25.4 percent.

Biden is second in two of the polls led by Sanders (21 percent in Emerson College, and 25 percent in the CBS survey); Pete Buttigieg is second in the Times poll, with 18 percent support. The CBS and Suffolk polls put Buttigieg in third place; the Emerson poll in fourth. Elizabeth Warren is fourth in every poll, except for the Emerson survey, in which she is essentially tied with Buttigieg.

The Iowa caucuses will be held on Monday, Feb. 3.

Biden has previously floated the idea that one or both of the Obamas would play a leading role if he were to win the White House.

During an appearance on The Late Show with Stephen Colbert in September 2019, the former vice president joked that he had already broached the idea of asking Michelle Obama to be his running mate. A few months later in December of that year, Biden went further by telling voters in Iowa he would appoint Barack Obama to the Supreme Court, provided the former president would “take it.”

Breitbart News noted that “many of the Obamas’ friends and supporters have remained cool on backing Biden. Obama, himself, reportedly is not big on his former vice president’s chances, allegedly telling a rival 2020 Democrat that Biden lacks an ‘intimate bond’ with voters.”

Free Press International