Vice President Joe Biden conceded Wednesday that the "hope and change" that he and President Barack Obama promised the nation in their 2008 campaign slogan never happened.
Speaking at Generation Progress, a segment of the think tank Center for American Progress that is dedicated to student and youth advocacy, the vice president told the millennials that doesn't mean they should give up.
"Look, folks, this is within our power to change," Biden said in remarks first posted by
BuzzFeed.
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"Everybody says because we tried in '08 and it didn't happen, it's not possible. Wrong. We've gone through these periods before."
He encouraged the young people to be the"drivers" of change.
"But folks, this is totally within our power," he said. "Change. Change for the better is absolutely possible, and I believe it's close to inevitable, if you're the drivers of it."
Republican House Speaker John Boehner wants to pursue a
lawsuit against Obama for abuse of power — saying he failed to enforce, waived, or ignored laws dozens of times in healthcare, energy and foreign-policy decisions.
At an impasse with Congress, the president has vowed to go it alone and make changes where he can by
executive orders.
The optimistic and popular "hope and change" campaign for Obama's first go-round in the White House was replaced in 2012 with a more ambiguous slogan: "Forward."
It immediately lit up Twitter – mostly because of a social media push by Republicans to mock it, the
International Business Times reported at the time.
The Biden remarks were noted Wednesday by the Republican National Committee, which called the admission "huge":
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