Psst, Hillary, if you want to get on Barack’s good side call him “my Führer.”

Via Politico:

[U]nderstandably, Biden’s mind is much on Clinton these days, and he has often told friends he thinks he can beat her because he has seen her up close and judges himself at least her equal. (Like every other prominent Democrat with a sense of self-preservation, he is reluctant to criticize her publicly, saying “I’m not getting into that” when I ask him to compare Clinton’s tenure at Foggy Bottom with current Secretary of State John Kerry’s.) He told me he was “as qualified as anybody” to be president, and, more pointedly, he has been telling friends he thinks he’s “the most qualified,” a clear reference to Clinton, according to three of them I talked to.

The Biden-Clinton relationship is friendly, but complicated. During Obama’s first term, Biden hosted Clinton for regular Tuesday breakfasts in his study, and he believes he played a critical role as her “Obama whisperer,” helping her to understand the boss during the first year when the two former combatants were reconciling. People close to both say the breakfasts also gave him insight into Clinton’s ambivalence about living in the White House, the shackles of fame and what Biden has described privately as “her burden of having to run for president.”

That sense of obligation is what makes Clinton a principled person, Biden believes, but it also puts her in a defensive crouch at a time when the party’s base is still yearning for the progressive audacity that Obama promised but couldn’t quite deliver. “I’m not sure this is a moment for caution or deliberateness,” Biden recently told a friend.