Such is the burden and the blessing of Obama for Biden. The former Vice-President owes his title and his frontrunner status to the former President. But it's far from clear that running as an unwavering Obama loyalist is enough to inherit Obama's winning coalition of voters.
The base of the party has moved left since he moved out of the White House. As popular as Obama remains with Democrats, many of the young people, women and progressives who lined up for him are more than ready to turn the page. Biden showed on Thursday he's not going to do it for them.
That is the tension that drove both nights of debates in Detroit between all 20 Democrats vying to take on President Donald Trump. On Wednesday, the fight was between purists — senators Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders — and a cast of lesser-known pragmatists. Warren and Sanders both argued for big ideas and bold plans — "Medicare for All", free college — while others pushed for plans they claimed were better grounded in reality.
On Thursday, it showed through as nearly every Democrat on stage targeted Biden, the most prominent pragmatist there, piling on the attacks on his record and suggesting he should step aside for new ideas.
California Senator Kamala Harris hit Biden for his health plan that preserves "Obamacare" and builds on it, arguing it didn't go far enough and would leave millions uninsured. Both Castro and New York Mayor Bill de Blasio pressed Biden on deportations. When Biden declined to discuss his counsel to Obama on the matter, New Jersey Senator Cory Booker cried foul.
"Mr Vice-President, you can't have it both ways. You invoke President Obama more than anybody in this campaign. You can't do it when it's convenient and then dodge it when it's not," he said.
When de Blasio asked Biden about his role in police brutality and civil rights issues, a frustrated Biden referred back to Obama again.
"I find it fascinating everybody is talking about how terrible I am on these issues," Biden said.
"Barack Obama knew exactly who I was. He had 10 lawyers do a background check on everything about me on civil rights and civil liberties, and he chose me, and he said it was the best decision he made."
That argument has been working for Biden with at least one key slice of the Democratic coalition. Polls show he has strong support among black voters, well ahead of Harris and Booker, the two black candidates in the race.
In South Carolina, where some two-thirds of the Democratic primary electorate is black, Biden has the support of 51 per cent of African American Democratic voters, according to a recent Monmouth University poll. Harris landed at 12 per cent.
But there may be limits for Biden in relying on his association with Obama. It's not enough for some young voters, including the young black voters Biden needs to push to the polls if he wants to avoid the fate of Hillary Clinton, another Obama loyalist.
"For a certain set of people, older black voters, Obama is golden. That's all you need to hear," said Branden Snyder, the 32-year-old executive director of Detroit Action, a group that organises people of colour. Snyder noted Obama campaigned for Clinton in Detroit, but the city still saw turnout drop and Michigan go for Trump. For voters roughly 45 and younger, "we've seen this before". "The promises that were made, by and large, weren't met," he said, citing immigration and the uneven economic recovery that followed the housing crash. "We want the understanding of what will be different, of what your plan is."
Biden's campaign team say they have no concerns about Biden's close alignment with the former President.
Biden, meanwhile, yesterday expressed bewilderment at the beating Obama's legacy took.
"I hope the next debate we can talk about our answers to fix the things that Trump has broken, not how Barack Obama made all these mistakes," Biden said. "He didn't. He didn't."
- AP
