Joe Biden borrowed a line from Pete Buttigieg to knock Bernie Sanders before this Saturday’s 2020 Democratic presidential primary in South Carolina.
“Look, the idea that there’s going to be this revolution — Americans aren’t looking for revolution. They’re looking for progress. They’re looking for, ‘Tell me how you’re going to help me with my healthcare,'” the two-term former vice president, 77, told NBC News on Wednesday.
Buttigieg, the former mayor of South Bend, Indiana, was jeered by Sanders supporters this month at the storied New Hampshire Democratic Party’s McIntyre-Shaheen 100 Club event, essentially a fundraiser for the state party, when he reached a line in his revised stump speech knocking the Vermont senator’s “all or nothing” approach to politics and hitting him for asking Democrats “to choose between a revolution and a status quo.”
Biden also undermined Sanders’s argument that the senator, as opposed to the former vice president, can knit together a winning coalition for the party ahead of the general election, particularly in terms of bringing new voters into the process.
“We always talk about this great increase in participation. He’s not going to come anywhere near generating the kind of participation of young folks that Barack did in 2008,” Delaware’s 36-year senator said of his old boss, former President Barack Obama. “There’s no evidence of that yet. There’s a lot of young people out there who are supportive of a more — I won’t say rational — a more practical path to get things done.”
On Wednesday, Sanders, 78, specifically named Biden when discussing how Democrats needed a new attitude before the fall fight against President Trump.
“To beat Trump, you cannot run a conventional campaign. Same old, same old is not going to do it,” the former mayor of Burlington, Vermont, said during a rally in North Charleston, South Carolina. “And I say to my good friend Joe Biden: Joe, you can’t do it when you have voted for terrible trade policies like NAFTA and PNTR with China, which have cost us millions of jobs.”
South Carolina is a must-win state for Biden, who has yet to claim victory in a contest this cycle. He leads Sanders on average 31.4% to 20.6%, but polls have tightened as the race has worn on, according to RealClearPolitics data.
