She ‘has an incredible soft spot for Joe…’
(Claire Russel, Liberty Headlines) Presidential candidate Joe Biden said he’d pick former First Lady Michelle Obama as his running mate “in a heartbeat.”
Biden’s campaign is reportedly trying to recruit Obama to lend him star power, but he reiterated past claims that he doesn’t think she’s interested in playing a prominent role.
“She’s brilliant. She knows the way around. She is a really fine woman. The Obamas are great friends,” Biden told Pittsburgh’s KDKA. “But I don’t think she has any desire to live near the White House again.”
The Obamas’ current home in Washington, DC’s posh Kalorama neighborhood is a full 1.9 miles from the White House.
Biden added that he hasn’t yet decided who his vice president pick will be, but he reaffirmed that he’s committed to choosing a female—though he didn’t commit to choosing a woman of color.
“I’ll commit that it will be a woman because it is very important that my administration look like the public, look like the nation,” Biden said. “And there will be a woman of color on the Supreme Court—that doesn’t mean there won’t be a vice president, as well.”
Biden is reportedly considering failed Georgia gubernatorial candidate Stacey Abrams, Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer, and former presidential candidate Amy Klobuchar, but some Democrats have hinted that Biden might tap Obama instead.
“She may not like politics, but also Donald Trump has dissembled everything her husband tried to accomplish,” said Dick Harpootlian, the former Democratic Party chairman of South Carolina. “If she engages, God help Donald Trump, because she’s tough as nails and enormously popular.”
Some conservatives, including radio host Rush Limbaugh, have long postulated as much, intimating that Obama’s adamant denials of her political ambitions are belied by her behind-the-scenes moves.
The Obamas have, in fact, operated below the radar to secure a juggernaut of campaign infrastructure, free political programming on platforms like Netflix and PBS, and a massive amount of super-PAC funding to contribute (indirectly) to the cash-strapped Biden operation.
Theories were already present that Michelle Obama might be the benefactor of a brokered convention should Sen. Bernie Sanders have remained in the race.
But speculation, including a recent New York Post article, has since turned to the possibility that Biden—who appears to be declining cognitively at a steady clip—might immediately step aside if elected, declaring himself unfit to execute the duties of the office.
“It is convoluted. It is dark. It is depressing. But it sounds like everything in this idea could actually happen,” Limbaugh said on his show Monday.
As of right now, Michelle Obama has publicly agreed only to help Biden’s campaign roll out a plan to increase voter registration, according to The Hill.
She “has an incredible soft spot for Joe,” said a source close to the Obama family, but that friendship likely won’t be enough to convince her to step into the spotlight on his behalf, the source added.
Liberty Headlines’ Ben Sellers contributed to this report.