OTTUMWA, Iowa — Joe Biden slammed Pete Buttigieg over claims he’s using “the same Washington playbook.”
“You guys have seen Pete. He’s a good guy. You’ve seen Bernie. You’ve seen me. Some things are just a self-evident contrast. I’ve gotten more than 8,600 votes in my life,” Biden, 77, told reporters at a Dairy Queen in Pella, Iowa, on Thursday, also referring to independent Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders.
.@JoeBiden takes questions from the press at a Dairy Queen in Pella, IA
Responds to @PeteButtigieg and draws a contrast with @BernieSanders: “He’s not a registered Democrat, to the best of my knowledge…”
Doesn’t confirm/deny reports of caucus night alliances w/ Yang/Klobuchar pic.twitter.com/JIPdzJ6LEF
— Johnny Verhovek (@JTHVerhovek) January 30, 2020
Buttigieg, 38, is trying to draw a generational contrast between himself and Biden as the two vie for center-left caucusgoers ahead of Monday’s opening primary contest. The former vice president took the swing at the former mayor of South Bend, Indiana, after the 38-year-old explicitly named him during a campaign stop earlier in the day.
“I hear Vice President Biden saying that this is no time to take a risk on someone new, but history has shown us that the biggest risk we could take with a very important election coming up is to look to the same Washington playbook and recycle the same arguments and expect that to work against a president like Donald Trump,” Buttigieg said in Decorah.
Buttigieg road-tested the revised stump speech during last weekend’s Fox News town hall, but Thursday’s iteration is the first time he has directly mentioned Delaware’s senator for 36 years.
While Buttigieg won his first election to become mayor with almost 11,000 votes, he secured his second term in office with less than 8,600 ballots, a feat that provided fodder for some of his Democratic rivals to mock him as a “college town mayor.”
Biden had been asked about Buttigieg’s jab at an earlier appearance in Newton but declined to hit back until the Pella stop ahead of a town hall in Ottumwa.
“He’s a good guy. Pete’s a great guy, and, by the way, did you see that Trump’s sending 80 surrogates along with Pence to Iowa before the caucus?” he said in Newton.
