Buttigieg Attacks Biden and Sanders by Name in Bid to Make Up Ground

Buttigieg, the former mayor of South Bend, Indiana, dismissed disputes between the two men over the Iraq War and Social Security as a kind of politics of the past, saying their debates repeat the party’s mistakes.

“This is not the time to get caught up in reliving arguments from before,” he told several hundred voters gathered in a hotel ballroom in Decorah, Iowa. “The less 2020 resembles 2016 in our party, the better.”

In his stump speeches and in answers at campaign events, Buttigieg has steadfastly avoided direct hits on his opponents, instead drawing opaque contrasts that reporters and the most plugged-in Iowa Democrats have understood to be whacks at Biden and Sanders.

His decision to call out his chief rivals by name in the final days before the Iowa caucuses underscores the pressure Buttigieg faces for a strong finish. It is part of a closing argument that he has been ramping up for days, beginning with fundraising emails over the weekend that said Sanders was “a risk we can’t take.”

“I hear Vice President Biden saying that this is no time to take a risk on someone new,” he said. “But history has shown us that the biggest risk we could take with a very important election coming up is to look to the same Washington playbook.”

The move from Buttigieg is in keeping with his effort to paint himself as a transformational figure he argues neither Biden nor Sanders can be because of their decades of experience in Washington’s political battles.

In his remarks, Buttigieg argued that Sanders’ plans for “Medicare for All” and free college go further than what most in the Democratic Party can support.

“I hear Sen. Sanders calling for a kind of politics that says you got to go all the way here or nothing else counts,” he said. “It’s coming at a moment when we actually have a historic majority, not just a line around what it is we’re against, but agreeing on what it is we’re for.”

For days the Buttigieg campaign has been sending out fundraising appeals warning that it would be too “risky” to nominate Sanders and suggesting that President Donald Trump wants to face the Vermont senator in November.

“We risk nominating a candidate who cannot beat Donald Trump in November — and Trump’s team knows this,” Buttigieg’s deputy campaign manager, Hari Sevugan, wrote in one of the emails Tuesday. “They’re working to make sure it happens.”

Buttigieg, when asked by reporters this week, had resisted calling Sanders a risk himself and would not say if he believes Sanders could beat Trump.

“While reporters are sure eager to get me to do otherwise, I will remain as focused as possible on my own campaign,” he said Monday after a campaign stop in Boone, Iowa.

Yet, in a moment when many Democrats want party unity around a goal of defeating Trump, there’s a chance that Buttigieg’s harsher hits could backfire. The primary race has been notable for its lack of particularly tough attacks, with the candidates often circling one another warily even in the final days before caucusing begins.

Aides to Buttigieg said the latest remarks are a natural progression from arguments he’s been making for more than a week and that he is simply underscoring the choice voters will face.

It is a more aggressive version of the political contrast he has sought to paint in Iowa since Labor Day, when he was the first of the leading candidates to begin broadcasting TV ads in the state. He highlighted those messages with subtle argument against the progressive politics of Sanders and Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., who at the time was the state’s polling leader.

Now that Sanders and Biden are ahead of him, Buttigieg has shifted from an argument against a progressive revolution toward one focused around his rivals’ age, albeit without explicitly calling Sanders, 78, and Biden, 77, old.

Many of Buttigieg’s campaign stops have the words “TURN THE PAGE” spelled out in large blue letters behind the stage, a reminder of both his own far younger age, 38, and the idea that he would be free of the political entanglements and baggage that he ascribes to Biden and Sanders.

A political newcomer, he argues, would have both a better chance of defeating Trump in a general election and a more unfettered mandate to enact progressive policies in Washington.

This article originally appeared in The New York Times .