Following Rachel Maddow’s over-the-top praise of Vice President Joe Biden after he decided against a 2016 White House bid Wednesday afternoon, the liberal MSNBC host used her prime time show that night to continue to cheer the “universally well-liked” Biden.
Maddow opened her show by gushing that “no one of his political stature has built up more of a store of legitimate human emotional goodwill with political enemies and friends alike. Nobody has that kind of reservoir of goodwill. Nobody has anything like that, compared to Joe Biden.”
The MSNBC host then played clips of Biden’s announcement as well as several Republicans offering up their praise of Biden before she proceeded to laud over the vice president’s career:
But we really don’t know the full implications of this decision because we don’t really have anything to compare this to. And that’s because specifically there’s nobody like Joe Biden in modern American politics. There’s nobody else who’s almost universally personally liked and respected, even by people who disagree with him strongly.
Somebody who spent 40 years, not just in public office, but in very high-level public office. And after that 40-year-plus career, the bottom line about him, the same bottom line for his friends and his enemies, what everybody thinks about him is that he’s a good man.
Maddow then sympathetically wondered how all of Biden’s goodwill will “pay back to you in the world on a day like this, at what we know will be the apex of your career” before she wrapped up her cheerleading of his career that “nobody else can brag about”:
[H]ow does that pay back to you in the world on a day like this, at what we know will be the apex of your career, a career in which you have earned over a lifetime an amount of personal goodwill and affection that nobody else can brag about? The amount of personal goodwill and affection that accrues to Vice President Joe Biden because of the way he has lived his life in politics is unparalleled in our lifetimes. How does that pay back to him now that he’s made this decision?
See relevant transcript below.
MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow Show
October 21, 2015
RACHEL MADDOW: The unique thing about our current vice president deciding today not to run is not that there’s some amazing novelty of a vice president foregoing the opportunity to go next in line for the presidency in his own party. That happens. It happens to a lot of vice president. It’s not terribly unique also that Vice President Biden would have been an older candidate for president. Ronald Reagan was 69 years old when he ran for president, and Joe Biden is as fit as a fiddle and only three years older than that. Neither of these things are what make today’s decision unique.
What makes today’s decision unique is that it’s about this vice president choosing not to run. What is unique about this decision today is specific to Joe Biden himself, and it’s that Joe Biden, more than any other major national political figure is so universally well-liked. You may or may not have voted for him and Barack Obama when they ran. You may or may not agree with Vice President Biden on the issues. But no one of his political stature has built up more of a store of legitimate human emotional goodwill with political enemies and friends alike. Nobody has that kind of reservoir of goodwill. Nobody has anything like that, compared to Joe Biden.
--
MADDOW: The last big unknown is now known about the Democratic field for the presidency after the presidency of Barack Obama, with this decision by Vice President Biden today that he won’t run, we now know the contours of the Democratic race. We know the size of the field. But we really don’t know the full implications of this decision because we don’t really have anything to compare this to. And that’s because specifically there’s nobody like Joe Biden in modern American politics. There’s nobody else who’s almost universally personally liked and respected, even by people who disagree with him strongly. Somebody who spent 40 years, not just in public office, but in very high-level public office.
And after that 40-year-plus career, the bottom line about him, the same bottom line for his friends and his enemies, what everybody thinks about him is that he’s a good man. A, how do you do that in life in and in such a long successful political career? And B, how does that pay back to you in the world on a day like this, at what we know will be the apex of your career, a career in which you have earned over a lifetime an amount of personal goodwill and affection that nobody else can brag about? The amount of personal goodwill and affection that accrues to Vice President Joe Biden because of the way he has lived his life in politics is unparalleled in our lifetimes. How does that pay back to him now that he’s made this decision?
