(AURN News) — As President Joe Biden faced mounting pressure over his 2024 reelection bid, one relationship loomed large behind the scenes: his strained connection with former President Barack Obama. A new must-read book, “Fight,” by veteran political reporters Jonathan Allen and Amie Parnes, reveals how years of tension between the two men came to a head in the final months of Biden’s presidency. This week in a special series, AURN News is giving you all of the palace intrigue behind the Biden, Harris, and Trump 2024 campaigns.
“Biden had never gotten over the affronts,” Allen and Parnes write in “Fight,” describing the former vice president’s lingering resentment. “And he no longer trusted Obama’s political judgment. After Hillary’s shattering 2016 loss, Biden told everyone who would listen that he would have beaten Trump and that Obama had been wrong.”
In an interview with AURN News, Allen elaborated on what he described as a deep fracture.
“They both think they’re the big dog,” Allen said. “Joe Biden thinks that Barack Obama doesn’t get elected without Joe Biden being his Vice President, which I think is ridiculous. But, Biden always felt like Obama kind of snubbed him some, and particularly because in 2016 Obama got behind Hillary Clinton at a time when Joe Biden wanted to run and thought it was his turn.”
According to Allen, Obama had misgivings about Biden’s abilities even before the 2020 campaign. “Obama told anyone who would listen that Biden wasn’t up to it — to run,” he said. “And Biden ran anyway and won the presidency. And at this point, Biden no longer thinks that Obama’s got particularly good judgment.”
While the public saw them as close allies, the authors say that dynamic had faded. “They don’t even speak,” Allen told AURN News, “unless there’s some pressing need.”
Obama, known for his calculated post-presidency presence, remained mostly out of sight — but not out of mind. “He wants to do it without fingerprints,” Allen said. “He wants to be able to affect things without getting his hands terribly dirty.”
The relationship degraded to the point where, according to “Fight,” Biden and Obama were once put on the phone together “just so their aides could tell a reporter that they had spoken.”
The authors portray the collapse of the Obama-Biden partnership not only as personal but consequential. Their lack of unity, they argue, continued to destabilize the Democratic Party during a time of crisis.
This is THE book of 2025 — and a must-read. Get your copy today!
Click play to listen to the AURN News report from Jamie Jackson:
The post Biden Felt Betrayed. Obama Had Doubts. This Book Tells All. appeared first on American Urban Radio Networks.
