HAMPTON, New Hampshire — A voter warned Joe Biden at his first town hall-style event in New Hampshire since his disappointing finish in Iowa that she was about to ask a harsh question.
“I’m sorry, but I have a little bit of a mean question,” the female economics student started in Hampton Beach, New Hampshire. “How do you explain your performance in Iowa, and why should voters believe that you can win a national election?”
In response, the former vice president, 77, let her down easy, telling her it wasn’t “a mean” inquiry.
“It’s an honest question,” he said.
Biden, repeating what he told reporters during a rare 20-minute impromptu press conference in Manchester this week, told her and the crowd gathered in a hotel conference room on New Hampshire’s Seacoast that Iowa’s results weren’t indicative of how he would perform in more diverse states, such as Nevada and South Carolina, touting his reservoir of goodwill among black Democrats. He also claimed they weren’t a sign of his potential showing in battleground states as Democrats try to rebuild their so-called blue wall in the nation’s Rust Belt.
“It was a little bit confusing in Iowa,” he said while congratulating top finishers Pete Buttigieg and Bernie Sanders and acknowledging the weaknesses in his grassroots organizing efforts.
Former President Barack Obama’s No. 2 added, “The idea that you come in with about half the delegates that the leaders come in with does not necessarily say how you’re going to win Pennsylvania, how you’re going to win Michigan.”
Though Delaware’s senator for 36 years has sent mixed messages about how he realistically views his electoral chances in New Hampshire on Sunday, he said he was “more determined” than he was before Iowa “to do the things that need to be done,” even if history was against him, given two neighboring senators were still in the race.
“And no matter what happens in this state, I’m going to feel the same way,” he said.
Buttigieg, 38, and Sanders, 78, come to New Hampshire after a close one-two finish in Iowa, essentially tying for state delegate equivalents, while the Vermont senator won the popular vote. Meanwhile, Biden placed fourth behind Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren, 70.
Buttigieg, the former mayor of South Bend, Indiana, is surging in New Hampshire in a host of polls, suggesting he could beat both Sanders and another homegrown favorite, Warren, in their own backgrounds.
