SIOUX CITY, Iowa — Pete Buttigieg dinged Bernie Sanders for claiming he’s running the only Democratic campaign for the White House that’s calling for change.
“On the other hand, you have Sen. Sanders sharing ideas and values that I think we can all aspire, but a political approach that says it’s all or nothing and you have to choose between a revolution and a status quo,” Buttigieg, 38, said in Sioux City.
The former mayor of South Bend, Indiana, tried to avoid public political mudslinging with his primary opponents for much of his presidential bid. But this week, he dropped the facade after being pressed by reporters following an avalanche of campaign fundraising emails based on Sanders’s rise in Iowa, the first-in-the-nation state.
On Thursday, the mayor named both Sanders, 78, and former Vice President Joe Biden, his 77-year-old chief rival for center-left caucusgoers at next Monday’s opening contest for the 2020 nomination.
“I hear Sen. Sanders calling for a kind of politics that says you’ve got to go all the way here and nothing else counts. And it’s coming at the very moment when we actually have a historic majority, not just aligned around what it is we’re against, but agreeing on what it is we’re for,” he said in Decorah.
His attack on Biden for using the “same Washington playbook” prompted the 36-year Delaware senator to dig at Buttigieg’s electoral record in a small town such as Indiana’s South Bend.
“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,” he told reporters in Pella.
