Biden’s Bros: Pete, Beto, Garcetti Bring Energy, But Barack Would Be Joe’s Ultimate Bro Against Trump

A spate of endorsements and clearly managed appearances this past week revealed how former Vice President Joe Biden will use his own group of bros to take on Sen. Bernie Sanders, with hopes that he will win the nomination, so he can unleash his ultimate trump card in a face-off with Donald Trump: former President Barack Obama.

The rapid-fire series of endorsements and appearances came over a chaotic 24-hour period. They began in Dallas, with Pete Buttigieg dropping out of the primary fight, and immediately endorsing Biden. In a surprising scene, Biden then compared Buttigieg to the son he lost to brain cancer, Beau Biden, seeming to even take the former South Bend mayor aback. Buttigieg spoke glowingly of the senior member of the Democratic Party, with Biden playfully massaging his shoulders, and Buttigieg immediately showed how a criticism during his campaign could be turned into an important compliment.

“On some of the most important issues affecting my generation, and the next generation — climate change, gun violence — Joe Biden has been delivering on those very priorities,” Buttigieg, who cast himself as a leader for the new generation during the race, said, using his cache to communicate that Joe is the very leader the moment calls for.

Less than three hours later, a pumped up Biden, clearly energized from his South Carolina win, was yelling to his rally crowd and they were into it, for sure, but not like they were when former candidate and Texas son Beto O’Rourke stormed the stage. If Buttigieg reminded him of his son, it was clear Biden just likes to hangout with O’Rourke.

In Joe Biden we have someone who in fact is the antithesis of Donald Trump,” the former El Paso congressman said on stage, swinging his arm to punctuate his words. “Joe Biden is decent, he’s kind, he’s caring, he’s empathetic.”

But then O’Rourke did something else. He recalled an emotional moment during a CNN town hall the previous week when Biden listened “with his eyes closed so he could concentrate on every single word” said by a Charleston pastor whose wife was killed in the appalling hate crime shooting at Mother Emanuel AME Church. Biden “spoke back to him, and to all of us, from his heart filled with compassion, and love, and the power to heal,” O’Rourke explained.

O’Rourke tied that eternal wound in the heart of Charleston, to the persistent pain of El Paso, Texas, where a white nationalist targeted Latinos and Mexicans solely because of their “ethnicity and the color of their skin.” This was O’Rourke as storyteller for Biden, repackaging the old, familiar, boring guy the country knows in a way that could truly help Biden as he tries to snatch the nomination from Sen. Bernie Sanders and look towards a battle with Trump. Biden would go on to win Texas the next day, crediting O’Rourke’s endorsement. As he did with Buttigieg, he said O’Rourke would play a vital role from within his administration.

On Super Tuesday, Biden was in California and feeling good as the votes rolled in. With his vintage aviators on, he ordered up some ice cream — chocolate, or chocolate in Spanish, as his pal Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti said while ordering. Garcetti’s wasn’t a new endorsement — it came in January — and Biden wasn’t going to win California, but the margin he has received in the state with votes still being counted, blunted any comeback from Sanders, who was swamped by the former vice president’s newly consolidated support that day.

With Sen. Elizabeth Warren ending her campaign, and important charges of sexism in the race swirling in her wake, the Biden campaign wasn’t exactly in a rush to tout their new collection of young white dudes as a strategy they can lean on moving forward, with a senior advisor dismissing a “bro-strategy,” and pointing to their big tent that includes new endorsements like Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer.

But Jess Morales Rocketto, political director of the National Domestic Workers Alliance, said the campaign is pretty clear about what Biden’s downsides are, “even if they won’t say it, it’s pretty obvious.”

“What people have heard over and over again is that vintage Biden is what people love about him,” she said, citing the aviators-vibe, and goodnatured wisecracking he’s known for. “It helps push back against the evidence that he’s old and reminds people why they like Joe Biden. So as he moves into a race between him and another older man, they’re going to lean into surrogates to play a role on youth and energy, because he needs to turn out young people but he’s not the best candidate to do so.”

But any discussion of Biden’s friendships, must begin and end with his cherished bromance with Obama, their strong connection most clearly visible on Jan. 12, 2017, just days before Trump’s inauguration.

Voters, and scores of young people, might be skeptical of Biden, they only need to look back a week to remember that Biden was being asked whether he would drop out of the race if he continued to flounder, but then there is that video of Obama, bestowing the nation’s highest honor, the Presidential Medal of Freedom, to his emotional vice president who had to turn from the cameras to wipe away tears, calling Biden “as good a man as God ever created.”

Those reminders carry weight with Democrats — including black voters Biden needs solidly in his corner — if he wins the nomination, and meets Trump in the general election. The incumbent president not only polls stronger with men in general, but his reelection campaign is targeting black and Latino men to erode the high margins with voters of color that Democrats need to win the White House.

Eric Koch, a Democratic strategist, said we know “women are going to be the backbone of this election so getting them to come out is vital,” but acknowledged the enduring power of the Obama-Biden connection moving forward.

“Barack Obama and Joe Biden have forged an absolute friendship that’s both poltiical and personal, and you just have to see Obama putting the Presidential Medal of Freedom on Joe Biden’s neck to know their connection is very deep,” he said. “And obviously, Barack Obama maintains absolute popularity in the Democratic Party, and them campaigning together does evoke a type of feeling that is both nostalgic, and forward-facing for voters for sure.”