Vice President Joe Biden isn’t beating around the bush ahead of the midterm elections: he’s confident that American voters stand with Democrats.
In a speech to House Democrats on the last day of the party’s retreat in Maryland, Biden spoke about the values of America’s middle class and said it was clear where the majority stands in the country. “I can’t think of a time when the issues that affect the American people most affect the middle class,” he said, listing marriage equality, income equality, and gun control. “Overwhelmingly, they support us.”
Biden noted that despite a bipartisan budget deal struck in Congress at the end of last year, there was no guarantee the Republican Party wouldn’t eventually turn their backs on compromise.
“Does anyone think that the Republican Party has walked away from the Ryan budget?” Biden asked. “Does anybody in this room think that if they, in fact, are able to take the Senate or increase their numbers or maintain their numbers in the House that that’s not what they’re going to get back to?”
House Speaker John Boehner and Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell are currently under fire from their colleagues on the right after the debt ceiling vote earlier this week.
Biden acknowledged the rift within the GOP, and used the party’s fractured state to encourage Democrats to be aggressive with their leadership. “There isn’t a Republican Party,” he said. “I wish there was a Republican Party. I wish there was one person who would sit across the table from us, make a deal, make a compromise, and know when you got up from that table, it was done.” He added, “All you had to do is look at the response to the State of the Union. What were there, three or four?” Biden’s speech focused on the upcoming midterm elections, but the vice president hasn’t been shy about discussing his 2016 ambitions. “There may be reasons I don’t run, but there’s no obvious reason for me why I think I should not,” Biden recently told CNN. A recent ABC News/Washington Post poll shows Biden in second place in a hypothetical 2016 match-up against Hillary Clinton, though is still viewed as a favorable option were he to run.
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