Joe Biden: What If Obama Had Been Assassinated?

Joe Biden’s campaign is in full swing and the hits just keep coming.

At a campaign stop in New Hampshire over the weekend, Biden addressed an audience about this history of service in the government, and particularly how he has had the political fortune to be serving during the assassination of civil rights legends Martin Luther King, Jr. and Bobby Kennedy.

But the former vice-president didn’t stop there. He went on to connect the tragedies to his time serving as Barack Obama’s vice-president, and asked the audience to imagine what it would have been like if Obama had also been assassinated.

“My two political heroes were Martin Luther King and Bobby Kennedy. My semester they were both shot and killed. Imagine what would have happened if god forbid Barack Obama had been assassinated after becoming a de facto nominee. What would have happened in America?”

Certainly no one believes Joe Biden wishes Obama dead, but there is an element of “fantasy” to this statement. Almost as if Biden were saying, “I served through two crushing political assassinations and I could have been serving during a third!”. It was an attempt to connect an important legacy of racial struggle to his campaign, but it was strangely morbid. One gets the sense that Biden almost regrets not having such a crisis to run on.

A lot of attention has been paid to Biden’s growing string of gaffes and his seemingly deteriorating health. The campaign trail is brutal and can take its toll on even the healthiest of adults. However, it is becoming hard to tell if Biden’s gaffe-train is fueled by poor health or simply personality. Whatever Biden’s personality issues are, perhaps he should stick to his initial promise of not running on his connection to the historical Obama administration. It seems safer that way.

*Follow Kira Davis on Twitter @RealKiraDavis

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