Former Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. speaks to members of the media after a marketing campaign occasion in Des Moines.Credit score...Tamir Kal
In an interview this weekend, Joseph R. Biden Jr. accused Bernie Sanders of being inconsistent on Social Safety, stoking contemporary pressure between the 2 main candidates over a difficulty of nice significance to older Iowa caucusgoers.
The 2 septuagenarian contenders have clashed over the subject repeatedly in current days as Mr. Sanders seeks to make inroads into Mr. Biden’s standing with older voters. The previous vice chairman was requested about their disagreement in an interview with New Hampshire’s WMUR Information 9 that aired this weekend.
“What about these Democratic voters who say that Bernie has been constant this entire time?” requested Adam Sexton, WMUR’s political director.
“Effectively, he hasn’t been,” Mr. Biden replied. “However I’m not going to assault Bernie. He has been — he hasn’t even been constant on Social Safety. However right here’s the deal. I’ve laid out clearly what my plan for Social Safety is. I’m going to extend Social Safety advantages.”
It wasn’t instantly clear what potential inconsistencies Mr. Biden was referring to. Each males at present help strengthening this system.
Mr. Sanders has been essential of Mr. Biden’s previous help for Social Safety freezes and different offers that alarmed Social Safety advocates on the time.
In a press release Sunday evening, Mr. Sanders’s marketing campaign supervisor, Faiz Shakir, ticked by Mr. Biden’s report on these measures.
“Then again, Bernie Sanders fought these efforts each single step of the best way, and has fought his total profession to guard and broaden Social Safety,” Mr. Shakir mentioned, additionally saying that Mr. Biden “continues making an attempt to cover his efforts to assist Republicans minimize Social Safety.”
In the meantime, Mr. Biden has mentioned the Sanders marketing campaign is mischaracterizing part of his record on the difficulty.
Mr. Sanders, who has typically supported rising funding for this system and opposed cuts, has nonetheless confronted scrutiny for his use of the time period “changes” years in the past, a phrase some have taken to counsel cuts to this system, although his marketing campaign denied that was his intent in a Bloomberg News report final week.
The Vermont senator has edged Mr. Biden in a number of current early-state surveys, including in a New York Times/Siena College Iowa poll launched Saturday. However that very same ballot discovered that Mr. Biden maintained a robust benefit with older probably caucusgoers.
DES MOINES — Caucuses are demanding below one of the best of circumstances. You need to get to a selected room at a selected time. Seats are scarce. You have to physically realign as nonviable candidates are eradicated. The method can final for hours, and you’ll’t go away early.
However for a lot of Iowans with disabilities, caucusing isn’t simply troublesome: It’s unattainable.
If a precinct is overcrowded, as many are, folks in wheelchairs can’t safely navigate. If caucusgoers aren’t allowed to depart the room to make use of the lavatory, folks with digestive illnesses like Crohn’s merely can’t take part. And there’s no distant participation choice, which excludes people who find themselves immunocompromised or too sick to depart their houses — individuals who might in any other case vote by absentee poll in main or normal elections.
We talked to caucusgoers, advocates and the Iowa Democratic and Republican Events about accessibility. Here’s what they told us.
WEST DES MOINES, Iowa — Selecting up on a line of assault he first launched Saturday, former Mayor Pete Buttigieg prompt to voters right here, with out naming him, that it will be too dangerous to appoint Senator Bernie Sanders to face off in opposition to President Trump.
Mr. Buttigieg first known as Mr. Sanders “a threat we are able to’t take” in a fund-raising attraction Saturday. Throughout a Sunday rally at Maple Grove Elementary College right here, he went after Mr. Sanders once more.
“We can’t run the chance of making an attempt to defeat this president with the identical Washington political warfare mentality that introduced us thus far,” he mentioned. “It’s time for one thing new, it’s time for one thing completely different and it’s time to show the web page.”
Mr. Buttigieg, who’s spending the ultimate days of his Iowa marketing campaign making a case for his personal electability, prompt Mr. Sanders’s left-wing politics and pledge to prepare supporters to push his agenda as president weren’t the prescription the nation wanted.
“The nation will probably be…