Joe Biden’s $200,000 paid speech praising a House Republican, briefly explained

Joe Biden hasn’t announced if he’s running for president yet, but his potential campaign took a bit of a hit Thursday when the New York Times reported the former vice president had given a paid speech in which he complimented a House Republican weeks before the 2018 midterm elections.

The Times’s Alex Burns found Biden had received $200,000 from the Economic Club of Southwestern Michigan, “a business-minded civic organization” that receives some money from an Upton family foundation. He gave a speech in October in Benton Harbor, Michigan, in which he praised Upton as “one of the finest guys I’ve ever worked with,” crediting the Congress member for working to increase federal funding for cancer research. According to reports at the time, Biden otherwise hit some of his favorite notes in the speech, arguing for the need for consensus and mocking the “half-baked nationalism” and “phony populism” of President Donald Trump and others.

Republicans ran ads touting the vice president’s kind words about Upton, who represents a more moderate district that Democrats hoped would be in play in a favorable environment. Local Democrats begged Biden to do some damage control, though it seems he declined, per, according to the Times. Upton ultimately won by less than 5 percentage points after winning by 22 points in 2016 — and, while Biden can’t exactly be blamed for a longtime incumbent winning reelection, the implication is that he didn’t help.

The story raised two issues that could hurt Biden among Democrats as he seeks the 2020 nomination. It could open up questions specifically about his paid speechmaking; there is certainly a whiff of Hillary Clinton’s paid speeches to Wall Street insiders, which haunted her early 2016 campaign.

The other is Biden choosing to compliment a Republican at a critical moment in the midterms, which could reinforce some of the skepticism about him among the progressive grassroots that plays a big role in Democratic primaries. Biden has always been proud of his ability to work across the aisle, and his affection for Upton is in part because of the Republican’s work to support the cancer research initiative Biden undertook after his son Beau’s death from brain cancer. His praise seemed to come from a genuine place.

Still, it was an odd look for maybe the most eligible Democrat considering a 2020 presidential bid to praise a Republican running in a competitive election weeks before voters go to the polls.

But Biden isn’t shying away from or apologizing for the speech. In fact, he was defiant in comments to the US Conference of Mayors after the story came out. “I like Republicans. Bless me, father, for I have sinned,” he said with sarcasm and a pantomime.

Biden sees himself as a potentially unifying candidate. The Times previously reported that Biden had told friends he was considering a run largely because he wasn’t sure any other Democratic candidate would be able to beat Trump. He seems to feel a certain responsibility for Trump’s 2016 victory, after declining to challenge Hillary Clinton for the Democratic nomination.

Biden is well liked within the party and leads the early 2020 polling, but a lot of elections experts seem to assume that high support is the result of name recognition more than anything. As long as he’s the perceived front-runner, it’s almost certain the Times report is not going to be the last tumultuous news cycle he’ll have to endure.

Praising a House Republican for their good work on cancer research isn’t exactly at odds with how Biden views himself or wants to present himself to the public. He wants people to believe he can bring Americans together. But if Biden decides to jump into the race, the question will be whether that’s the message Democratic primary voters want to hear right now.