MANCHESTER, New Hampshire — Joe Biden defended his offensive against Pete Buttigieg, denying he was encouraging a circular firing squad around his 2020 Democratic presidential rival.
“When you get attacked, you’ve got to respond,” Biden, 77, told reporters in Manchester on Saturday to what he categorized as a barrage of shots directed his way this cycle.
The former vice president claimed he had “never been very comfortable attacking someone else,” but said he felt cornered because reporters and political commentators judge candidates “on how much fire” they display on the campaign trail.
Yet, he reiterated his scrutiny of Buttigieg’s past comments regarding former President Barack Obama, after weeks of the former mayor of South Bend, Indiana, accusing him of following the “old Washington playbook.”
“He’s saying the problems we have now are because of the past,” he said, “categorically” denying the 38-year-old’s insinuations.
After a poor showing in this week’s Iowa caucuses and three days before the New Hampshire primary on Tuesday, Biden this week has debuted more bellicose rhetoric on the stump. He visibly bristled when asked whether that was because he was growing desperate as his White House bid appears to be losing steam. Hillary Clinton similarly made the same lack of experience argument against Obama in 2008.
“This guy’s not a Barack Obama,” Biden said.
Delaware’s senator for 36 years, however, insisted he wasn’t running for the 2020 nomination to establish “a third term of Obama,” saying he simply wanting to haul “the car out of the ditch.”
On Saturday, Biden also skewered Bernie Sanders for suggesting ahead of the 2012 election that Obama should face a primary challenger. The Vermont senator, 78, told the Nation in a 2011 interview people wished Obama stood up for the middle class “in a way that he has not done up to this point.”
“It would do this country a good deal of service if people started thinking about candidates out there to begin contrasting what is a progressive agenda as opposed to what Obama is doing,” Sanders said on the Thom Hartman Radio Show that year.
