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2020 elections

Sens. Cory Booker and Kamala Harris on Thursday defended their criticisms of former Vice President Joe Biden at Wednesday night’s Democratic primary debate, arguing that the presidency of Barack Obama, who remains wildly popular among Democrats, is not above criticism.

The former president was somewhat of an off-stage target at the debate, as 2020 hopefuls touted their own plans to build on or overhaul his signature health care law and criticized the rate of deportations in his administration. While there was virtually no criticism of Obama by name, attacks on his record were directed regularly at Biden, who served under Obama and is the front-runner for the 2020 nomination.

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Booker (D-N.J.) argued that no politician, no matter how well-liked, should be above reproach. Asked in an interview on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe” whether it “made sense” for Democrats to be carping about Obama’s tenure instead of President Donald Trump, Booker insisted that the intraparty criticism should not be out of bounds.

“Well, look, at the end of the day, you’re right, President Obama has been the statesman of our party and has the highest approval ratings, but I don’t think any administration, as you and I both know have been in public life, nothing is without criticism,” he said, adding that there were “really substantive issues to discuss,” especially when it came to immigration.

As the Democratic Party has drifted further left in years since Obama left office, the former president has increasingly come under fire from liberals who decry his policies as incrementalist or more moderate than they would have liked. Despite these criticisms, Obam still enjoys immense popularity among Democrats — a CNN poll from 2018 found he had a 97 percent favorability rating within his own party.

At Wednesday’s debate, the New Jersey senator sparred once again not only with Biden over the former vice president’s criminal justice record, but also over Biden’s role as second-in-command to a president referred to by some critics as the “deporter in chief.”

Biden, who has tied his campaign to his former boss by invoking the work of the “Obama-Biden administration” and touting his friendship with the former commander in chief, bore the brunt of these attacks on Wednesday.

Despite attempts by the Obama administration to pursue immigration reform and executive action to protect so-called Dreamers, his administration’s three million deportations were the subject of protests within the debate hall Wednesday, with hecklers interrupting the debate as Biden tried to outline what he would have done differently.

At one point, Booker interjected, telling Biden: “You can’t have it both ways. You invoke President Obama more than anybody in this campaign. You can’t do it when it’s convenient and dodge it when it’s not.“

While Biden wouldn’t say whether he’d protested the mass deportations carried out under Obama, Booker on Thursday called the current immigration system “savagely broken” and said that “so many things are happening that just aren’t common sense,” though he didn’t specifically lay the blame on Obama.

“Having a substantive conversation about that isn’t distracting from a great administration before,” the senator said Thursday morning, adding that criticisms of Obama should not distract Democrats from being forward-looking through the 2020 primary.

“It’s really trying to give a picture of what we want in the future. I tried to go back time and time again last night on multiple occasions, for us to keep our eyes on the prize, which is unifying as a party and being able to keep Donald Trump, and then do it in a way that doesn’t further divide this country.”

Harris (D-Calif.), whose criticisms of Obama were rooted more in her desire to replace the Affordable Care Act with a transition to a Medicare for All-style health care plan, pointed out that Obama himself had endorsed the general idea and said in an interview on “Morning Joe” that his contributions should not be overlooked.

“What he did and what he accomplished in getting the Affordable Care Act to actually come into being was extraordinary,” she said. “But in his own words, he has said it was a starter house. He has said Medicare for All is a good idea. So when I talk about my Medicare for All plan, it is about building on the success of what President Obama achieved.”

The California senator added that Obama had been an “extraordinary president and probably the best president or one of the best presidents in our lifetimes.” Still, she said, the state of Obamacare under two years of Trump “is not working.”

The friendly fire aimed at Obama on Wednesday split former members of his administration. Julián Castro, the former secretary of Housing and Urban Development who has made waves with his call to decriminalize illegal border crossings, at one point zinged Biden by telling the former vice president that his opposition to the idea showed “one of us has learned the lessons of the past and one of us hasn’t.”

The barrage of criticism prompted Obama’s first attorney general, Eric Holder, to issue a firm warning to his fellow Democrats. “Be wary of attacking the Obama record,” he wrote on Twitter following the debate. “Build on it. Expand it. But there is little to be gained — for you or the party — by attacking a very successful and still popular Democratic President.”

But in an interview on CNN’s “New Day,” Booker framed his critiques as mere tough love, and had even more praise for the former president, saying that if Obama could have run for a third term as president, “I wouldn’t be running.”

Still, the former Newark, N.J., mayor said Obama “ain’t perfect,” adding that “nobody’s ever pulled that off,” something he argued he had the authority to say as a former executive. Booker portrayed Democrats’ willingness to criticize the former leader of their party as a strength rather than a weakness, pointing to Republicans’ practice of staying silent in the face of an avalanche of Trump controversies.

“I’m sure if Barack Obama was sitting here — and I hope he’s sleeping this morning — he would tell you I made some mistakes. And to not point them out, to me is, you know, Donald Trump is the guy that my Republican colleagues can’t even criticize when he’s preaching racism,” he said. So “we are having an honest conversation about an administration that was incredible. I would take him back.”

Biden on Thursday expressed surprise at the pile-on the night before but mounted a full-throated defense of his former boss.

“I’m proud of having served with him, I’m proud of the job he did. I don’t think there’s anything he has to apologize for,” he told reporters in Detroit. “And I think, you know, it kind of surprised me, the degree of the criticism.”

He indicated that he would continue to have Obama’s back, but echoed Booker in calling for more forward-looking debates, and argued that changes in policy were necessary because “the world has changed since Obama.”

“The next debate, I hope we can talk about how we fix our answers, to fix things that trump has broken,” Biden said. “Not how Barack Obama made all these mistakes. He didn’t. He didn’t.”

While declining to criticize Democratic candidates who teed off on Obama’s record, Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) defended Obama’s record on Thursday when asked about the debates.

“President Obama is a very popular figure in America to this day because he did a very good job. Did he accomplish everything? No,” Schumer said. But “you compare the Obama Administration to this administration it’s night and day and Americans are realizing that.”

Burgess Everett contributed to this report.