Joe Biden lambasted Bernie Sanders in one of his last nationally televised appearances before Saturday’s South Carolina primary.
“It’s not about a revolution. It’s about results,” Biden, 77, said during a CNN town hall in Charleston. “But Bernie, in all the time he’s been in the United States Senate — I think he’s passed seven or eight bills, four of them really good. They relate to veterans and caring for veterans. A couple were post offices.”
Biden, along with most of the 2020 Democratic presidential primary field, has upped his attacks on the Vermont senator this week after he won last weekend’s Nevada caucuses with 46.8% of the state’s county convention delegates. Biden, who again questioned how the socialist would help down-ballot races in a general election, placed second with 20.2%.
The former vice president, mentioning in conservative-leaning South Carolina how he owns a 20-gauge and a 12-gauge shotgun for skeet shooting, said Sanders’s gun control record was still relevant, even though the senator admitted it was a bad vote.
“The idea here is that — what is the thing that motivates you to make your judgments?” he said, adding that no one had a problem scrutinizing his past decisions.
Biden, who was pressed on his handling of Anita Hill’s testimony during Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas’s confirmation hearing and his role in drafting and passing the 1994 Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act, continued to lash Sanders for his failure to criticize gun manufacturers.
“It was the right bill, then, unlike voting to give exemptions to gun manufacturers,” he said when asked about the 1994 crime bill, which he said “did not put more people in jail.”
South Carolina is a must-win state for Biden, who hasn’t performed well in the first three early-voting contests. He leads the crowded pack in the state with 31.4% support, followed by Sanders’s 20.6% share of the vote and entrepreneur Tom Steyer’s 15.4%, buoyed by the millions he spent on advertising while his rivals were investing ahead of other contests.
