“This is a guy who is more knowledgeable about foreign affairs than Hillary Clinton and John Kerry put together,” Harpootlian said. He pointed to Biden’s proposal nearly a decade ago to partition Iraq into three parts controlled by Sunnis, Shiites, and Kurds. It was derided by many in the foreign policy world, including the defense secretary at the time, Robert Gates. But with the rise of ISIS, Harpootlian argued it was prescient. “Think if we had done that where we’d be today,” he said. “There would be no ISIS. There would be no al-Qaeda operating in Iraq. He was ahead of his time on that, and I think everybody today agrees he was right.”

In a speech to the Human Rights Campaign on Friday, Biden also touted his decision to come out in support of gay marriage before Obama in 2012, a move that annoyed the White House at the time. Clinton didn’t publicly embrace marriage equality until after she left the State Department.

Yet more than any policy position, Harpootlian argues, Biden’s advantage resides in his ability to contrast himself favorably to Clinton just by virtue of his background and his personality. Until he became vice president, and even as a senator riding an Amtrak train back and forth to Delaware several days a week, Biden “lived a very moderate, middle-class life,” Harpootlian said.