AP Photo Biden in hush-hush donor meeting: Sanders ‘doing a helluva job’

Joe Biden sounded off Wednesday on one of his potential primary opponents — but it wasn't Hillary Clinton.

“I am not a populist. But Bernie Sanders, he’s doing a helluva job,” Biden said, puzzling at least a few donors at a Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee fundraiser in Miami.


Sure, it was a Joe-being-Joe moment. But a few donors weren’t over amused.

“What the hell was he saying? I mean, 90 percent of the room is a Hillary donor,” one contributor told POLITICO.

Another attendee chuckled at the out-of-the-blue mention of the Vermont senator: “Yeah. It was kinda weird.”

Aside from that, Biden made no mention of the looming presidential race and whether he’d ultimately run.



“I’m here for one reason and one reason only: We have to take back the Senate,” two donors recalled Biden saying at the fundraiser. He twice endorsed Rep. Patrick Murphy, favored by the DSCC in the Senate contest against fellow Democratic Rep. Alan Grayson, a liberal firebrand who’s far more in the mold of Sanders to Murphy’s Clinton.

Biden hasn’t yet said whether he'll run. He has said he's considering it, though. And he’s thinking about Sanders.

As they map out a potential primary run, Biden's advisers are looking at how to run to Clinton's left — though that's complicated by the fact that his own record is similarly moderate. He would be threading a needle between her and the very devoted progressive following that Sanders has attracted.

Of the event attendees who spoke to POLITICO, all came away thinking he sounded like typical Joe Biden — giving a fact-filled, stream-of-consciousness address that discussed everything from energy prices in Europe to water quality in China to the looming Iran deal.

He spent the most time on that issue after dinner (steak or cod, which isn't native to South Florida waters). He’s pitching the plan Thursday at a townhall meeting in the congressional district of Democratic National Committee chair Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz.

Biden also took a swipe at the American Israel Public Affairs Committee. He said, donors recalled, that at the beginning of his political career, he raised more money for them than did any other politician. But AIPAC’s opposition to the Iran deal has soured him on the organization.



“The ads they’re running now — they’re not true,” Biden said, donors told POLITICO.

Biden also seemed to call out the donors, some of whom who paid $10,000 or more for the dinner, because they’re the so-called 1 percent who have 26 percent of the nation’s wealth – a system that he said is ruining the middle class, a donor said.

The event wasn’t recorded. The more than 30 donors at Steve Bittel’s home were given name cards and plastic zip-top bags in which to put their smartphones, which were then handed over to staff for safekeeping — and safeguarding against any secret recording. Donors said President Barack Obama’s campaign began doing this in 2012 after Republican candidate Mitt Romney was secretly recorded at (where else?) a Florida fundraiser where he appeared to disparage 47 percent of Americans essentially as freeloaders.

“They don’t want to have a Mitt Romney moment,” a donor explained.

Kristen Hayford contributed reporting.