Barack Oba­ma report­ed­ly expressed pri­vate doubts about Joe Biden becom­ing the Demo­c­rat pres­i­den­tial nom­i­nee in 2020. Accord­ing to Politi­co the for­mer pres­i­dent told one Demo­c­rat: “Don’t under­es­ti­mate Joe’s abil­i­ty to f… things up.” Mr Oba­ma was also said to have spo­ken about his own under­stand­ing of the 2020 Demo­c­rat elec­torate in Iowa. “And you know who real­ly doesn’t have it? Joe Biden,” he report­ed­ly said. There were said to have been lin­ger­ing ten­sions between the two after Mr Oba­ma sup­port­ed Hillary Clin­ton for the nom­i­na­tion in 2016. Leon Panet­ta, Mr Obama’s defence sec­re­tary, told Politi­co: “He [Mr Biden] was loy­al, I think, to Oba­ma in every way in terms of defend­ing and stand­ing by him, even prob­a­bly when he dis­agreed with what Oba­ma was doing. “To some extent, [he] often­times felt that that loy­al­ty was not being reward­ed.” Some of Mr Obama’s aides were said to have believed Mr Biden took dis­cus­sions in the wrong direc­tion when he was vice pres­i­dent. In his book Ben Rhodes, Mr Obama’s for­mer deputy nation­al secu­ri­ty advis­er, wrote that “in the Sit­u­a­tion Room, Biden could be some­thing of an unguid­ed mis­sile”. Mr Biden’s aides were said to have believed his skills get­ting things achieved in Con­gress were under-appre­ci­at­ed. Since Mr Biden secured the Demo­c­rat nom­i­na­tion Mr Oba­ma has enthu­si­as­ti­cal­ly backed him and will be a keynote speak­er at the Demo­c­rat Con­ven­tion next week.