Joe Biden has billed himself as Barack Obama’s “best friend” on the campaign trail, but Kamala Harris has a longer-standing claim to close friendship with the former president.
Obama has declined to endorse or even tacitly support his former vice president, perhaps in part because of the early and unstinting support he was given by Harris. In 2013, Obama said at a fundraiser: “She’s brilliant and she’s dedicated, she’s tough. … She also happens to be, by far, the best-looking attorney general.”
When there was uncomfortable laughter, Obama added: “It’s true, c’mon.” But he phoned Harris to apologize after he was widely criticized for being sexist. Harris has been one of the earliest supporters of his 2008 campaign, drawing flak from Hillary Clinton loyalists and risking her political future at a time when the former first lady and her husband Bill Clinton dominated the Democratic Party.
Obama’s decision to stay out of the 2020 race hasn’t stopped Biden, 76, from repeatedly invoking his relationship with the former president. He often touts Obama as one of his closest friends.
While Harris, who at 54 is just three years younger than Obama, has been much less vocal about her relationship with the former president, the two have been close for 15 years. She recently signaled that she might use this as a line of attack against Biden.
“I’m told that I was the first elected person in California to endorse [Obama] when he decided to run for president,” Harris said this month. “I will remind you, and it is important to know, that early in those days Joe Biden was running against him.”
Harris has recounted that she first met Obama in 2004, when she was the newly elected district attorney for San Francisco and he was an Illinois state senator running his first race for the U.S. Senate.
That summer, Obama shot to national prominence when he gave a widely-praised keynote address at the Democratic National Convention. Harris scored an invitation to the exclusive convention after-party honoring Obama at Vinalia, a restaurant in Boston. The event was such a sought-after ticket that people lined up in the rain to try to get inside, even after the club owners shut the doors when the party reached a 3,000-person capacity, according to reports from the time.
Obama returned the favor the next year, in March 2005, when he traveled to San Francisco to host a fundraiser to retire Harris’ campaign debt from her district attorney race. Harris was one of the earliest backers of Obama’s campaign for the Democratic presidential nomination, traveling to Springfield, Illinois, for his announcement in early February 2007.
She was vice chairwoman of his California campaign and co-led the California chapter of Women for Obama, hosting fundraisers for Obama in the state. Harris was one of Obama’s most outspoken advocates during the drawn-out Democratic primary that pitted him against Hillary Clinton, regularly speaking on his behalf and shrugging off criticism she was not supporting the person widely assumed to be on the path to becoming America’s first female president.
As Bill Clinton urged California Democrats to “chill out” about the contested primary during the state’s Democratic Party convention in San Jose in 2008, Harris spoke to the audience about the historic urgency of nominating Obama as the party’s first black presidential candidate.
“Barack Obama will be a president who finally ends the era of fear that has been used to divide and demoralize our country,” said Harris at the event. Harris also traveled to Iowa to campaign for Obama, and in the summer she attended the Democratic National Convention as one of his surrogates.
Biden, in contrast, had no real personal relationship with Obama even though the two served together in the Senate from 2005 to 2008.
Although Biden was the ranking Democrat on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, which Obama served on, the two did not get along, according to longtime Obama confidante David Axelrod.
Instead, Obama befriended the Republican chairman of the committee, Sen. Richard Lugar, because he “found Lugar’s laconic nature a welcome counterpoint to the committee’s verbose ranking member, Joe Biden,” according to Axelrod’s memoir Believer. Obama told Axelrod: “Joe Biden is a decent guy, but man, that guy can just talk and talk. It’s an incredible thing to see.”
After one particularly long-winded Biden speech, Obama passed a note to an aide that said: “Shoot. Me. Now.”
Pete Rouse, a veteran Senate aide who later became Obama’s chief of staff, told the author Richard Wolffe: “In the Senate, Obama and Biden weren’t particularly close. Biden took pride in his Senate seniority and broad experience in public life, and he seemed to view Barack as somewhat of an impatient pretender.”
Biden criticized Obama on the campaign trail during the 2008 Democratic primary, telling the press that Obama was “not yet ready” to be president. The Delaware senator also raised eyebrows when he stated Obama was the first black presidential candidate who was “clean” and “articulate.”
When Biden dropped out after securing just 0.9% of the vote in the Iowa caucuses, he did not endorse Obama, withholding his support even after it was clear the then-Illinois senator would defeat Hillary Clinton.
Despite this, Obama decided to choose Biden as his running mate, largely because he thought Biden could help him win over voters in Pennsylvania, as well as supplying Washington gravitas and foreign policy experience, according to Axelrod. Eventually Biden and Obama “forged an extraordinary working relationship … Obama appreciated his vice president, and the feeling was mutual,” wrote Axelrod.
But that doesn’t mean Biden’s claim to be Obama’s “best friend” is mutual.
In June, Biden wrote on Twitter, “Happy #BestFriendsDay to my friend, @BarackObama,” and posted a photo of a friendship bracelets with the names “Barack” and “Joe” on it. Axelrod responded on Twitter: “This is a joke, right?”
