Vice President Joe Biden warned the country against viewing partisan opponents as the enemy Wednesday, a comment widely interpreted as a rebuke to Hillary Clinton.
"I don’t think we should look at Republicans as our enemies. They’re our opposition, not our enemies," Biden said during a Rose Garden speech announcing he will not run for president.
Clinton listed Republicans as the enemy she was most proud of making during last week’s Democratic debate, alongside other foes like the theocratic, terrorist-sponsoring regime in Iran. Clinton proxies have since clarified that the candidate intended her comments as a joke, but critics point to the comment as an inadvertent statement of truth for a candidate who has long believed she is under siege by unscrupulous partisans.
This is the second time in so many days that Biden has rebuked Clinton for equating political opposition with the enemy. On Tuesday, Biden said "it is necessary to end this notion that the enemy is the other party."
Biden seemed to take his rhetorical cues from presidential candidate Jim Webb, who said Tuesday that "the other party’s not the enemy. They’re the opposition."
Biden also issued a warning to Democratic candidates thinking about criticizing his boss’s record for political gain on the campaign trail.
"This party, our nation, will be making a tragic mistake if we walk away or attempt to undo the Obama legacy," Biden said.
"Democrats should not only defend this record and protect this record. They should run on the record."
Clinton and other candidates have already distanced themselves from certain aspects of Obama’s record, notably the Trans-Pacific Partnership trade deal and the Keystone XL pipeline.
If Biden is attempting to cast himself as a bipartisan peacemaker, it is a new role for the former senator. In the 1980s, Biden was a partisan troublemaker who led campaigns to derail the nominations of conservative judges Robert Bork and Clarence Thomas. The former effort, which was successful, was so partisan that Bork’s last name became synonymous with campaigns in defamation.
Transcript below:
I don’t believe like some do that it’s naïve to talk to Republicans. I don’t think we should look at Republicans as our enemies. They’re our opposition, not our enemies. For the sake of our country, we have to work together. As the president has said many times, compromise is not a dirty words. Look at it this way, folks: How does this country function without consensus. How do we move forward without being able to arrive at a consensus. Four more years of this kind of pitched battle may be more than this country can take. We have to change that. We have to change that.