DOVER, New Hampshire — Former Vice President Joe Biden took multiple swipes at his Democratic rivals, urging them to resist the temptation of turning on one another as the crowded primary field jostles for the right to challenge President Trump next year.
“The good news about being a front-runner is that you’re front-runner. The bad news about being front-runner: Everyone is behind you, looking,” Biden said Friday at a campaign stop in Dover, New Hampshire. “The last thing we need, to use Barack’s phrase, is form a circular firing squad here. We should be arguing about the future,” he added, referring to the warning former President Barack Obama issued in April.
Biden, whose lead on the pack of White House hopefuls has closed since the opening debates, referenced how he’s been “skewered” by what he called the “new Democratic Party” that believes “being able to cooperate with the other side is considered to be naive.”
“I love my candidates I’m running with who say, ‘Trump is abusing the executive authority by using executive orders for things he has no right to do,’ and then say, ‘And by the way, if I’m elected, I’m going to issue an executive order to make sure the following things happen.’ Oh Richie!” the longtime senator for Delaware said.
He also undermined contenders advocating for grand policy proposals, saying those who support platforms such as “Medicare for all” “mean well” and describing his moderate climate change idea as the “most far-reaching plan that’s really in reach.”
Biden similarly ripped Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, the Kentucky Republican who is increasingly casting a shadow on the 2020 election given how he will likely stymie a liberal agenda in Congress should a Democrat become president and Republicans retain the Senate next cycle.
“I’m going to make sure that I do everything in my power to beat Mitch McConnell in the state of Kentucky. We can win Kentucky,” he said. “I don’t say that with any animus … but he’s on the wrong side of every issue affecting the public, including in his own state.”
Biden is on a two-day swing of the Granite State, holding five events this weekend. The stop in Dover, however, did not go without incident. Protesters upset with the Obama administration’s record on deportations instigated competing chants with supporters of the former vice president as he greeted voters after his address.
