Vice President Joe Biden told fellow Democrats on Thursday that they should see it as “a gift from the Lord” if Republicans nominate Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas or billionaire businessman Donald Trump for president in 2016.



“We may be given a gift from the Lord in the presidential race here,” Biden told lawmakers attending the annual House of Representatives Democratic conference, held this year in Baltimore.

“I don’t know who to root for more: Cruz? Or what’s that guy’s name, he’s having a fundraiser for veterans tonight, I’m told,” said the vice president. Trump has announced he will snub Thursday’s Republican debate on Fox and will instead hold a veterans event in Des Moines at the same time.

Polls released just days before Iowa voters decide the first battle of the 2016 race show Cruz and Trump well ahead of the rest of the GOP field. Democrats and some Republicans say they think either candidate would drive off independent voters and keep the White House in Democratic hands.

Turning political prognosticator, Biden acknowledged that “it’s been a tough last couple cycles” – an apparent reference to Republican romps in the 2010 and 2014 midterm elections – but insisted that Democrats have “a real shot” to retake Congress.

“I’m confident we’ll win back the Senate. And I think we can make great inroads and maybe win back the House [even though] no one expects it now,” the vice president said. “But we’ve got to make the case” for Democratic policies, he stressed.

Biden also flatly rejected Republican charges that President Obama would hand over a world in chaos and allegations that “we have lost respect around the world.”

The campaign against the so-called Islamic State, he insisted, has turned around because “the president has finally gotten the attention of the Europeans to pony up. Because they haven’t been doing much of anything.”

And Biden, who recently met with Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, said “Erdogan has seen the Lord” and stepped up his country’s contributions to the campaign.

His comments came one day after Obama held a rare Oval Office meeting with Democratic presidential candidate Bernie Sanders, whom polls show running neck and neck with former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton in Iowa and trouncing her by double digits in New Hampshire.