DECORAH, Iowa — Pete Buttigieg escalated his assaults on Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. and Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont on Thursday, taking direct purpose on the two main presidential candidates as he tries to realize floor earlier than the Iowa caucuses.
Mr. Buttigieg, the previous mayor of South Bend, Ind., dismissed disputes between the 2 males over the Iraq warfare and Social Safety as a sort of politics of the previous, saying their debates repeat the occasion’s errors.
“This isn’t the time to get caught up in reliving arguments from earlier than,” he instructed a number of hundred voters gathered in a lodge ballroom in Decorah, Iowa. “The much less 2020 resembles 2016 in our occasion, the higher.”
In his stump speeches and in solutions at marketing campaign occasions, Mr. Buttigieg has steadfastly averted direct hits on his opponents, as an alternative drawing opaque contrasts that reporters and essentially the most plugged-in Iowa Democrats have understood to be whacks at Mr. Biden and Mr. Sanders.
His determination to name out his chief rivals by title within the closing days earlier than the Iowa caucuses underscores the strain Mr. Buttigieg faces for a robust end. It’s a part of a closing argument that he has been ramping up for days, starting with fund-raising emails over the weekend that stated Mr. Sanders was “a threat we will’t take.”
“I hear Vice President Biden saying that that is no time to take a threat on somebody new,” he stated. “However historical past has proven us that the most important threat we may take with a vital election arising is to look to the identical Washington playbook.”
The transfer from Mr. Buttigieg is in line with his effort to color himself as a transformational determine he argues neither Mr. Biden nor Mr. Sanders might be due to their a long time of expertise in Washington’s political battles.
In his remarks, Mr. Buttigieg argued that Mr. Sanders’s plans for “Medicare for all” and free school go farther than what most within the Democratic Social gathering can assist.
“I hear Senator Sanders calling for a sort of politics that claims you bought to go all the best way right here or nothing else counts,” he stated. “It’s coming at a second after we even have a historic majority, not only a line round what it’s we’re towards, however agreeing on what it’s we’re for.”
For days the Buttigieg marketing campaign has been sending out fund-raising appeals warning that it will be too “dangerous” to appoint Mr. Sanders and suggesting that President Trump needs to face the Vermont senator in November.
“We threat nominating a candidate who can not beat Donald Trump in November — and Trump’s crew is aware of this,” Mr. Buttigieg’s deputy marketing campaign supervisor, Hari Sevugan, wrote in one of many emails on Tuesday. “They’re working to ensure it occurs.”
Mr. Buttigieg, when requested by reporters this week, had resisted calling Mr. Sanders a threat himself and wouldn’t say if he believes Mr. Sanders may beat Mr. Trump.
“Whereas reporters are certain desperate to get me to do in any other case, I’ll stay as centered as potential alone marketing campaign,” he stated Monday after a marketing campaign cease in Boone, Iowa.
But, in a second when many Democrats need occasion unity round a aim of defeating Mr. Trump, there’s an opportunity that Mr. Buttigieg’s harsher hits may backfire. The first race has been notable for its lack of significantly powerful assaults, with the candidates usually circling each other warily even within the closing days earlier than caucusing begins.
Aides to Mr. Buttigieg say the most recent remarks are a pure development from arguments he’s been making for greater than every week, and that he’s merely underscoring the selection voters will face.
It’s a extra aggressive model of the political distinction he has sought to color in Iowa since Labor Day, when he was the primary of the main candidates to start broadcasting TV advertisements within the state. He highlighted these messages with delicate argument towards the progressive politics of Mr. Sanders and Senator Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts, who on the time was the state’s polling chief.
Now that Mr. Sanders and Mr. Biden are forward of him, Mr. Buttigieg has shifted from an argument towards a progressive revolution towards one centered round his rivals’ age, albeit with out explicitly calling Mr. Sanders, 78, and Mr. Biden, 77, previous.
Lots of Mr. Buttigieg’s marketing campaign stops have the phrases “TURN THE PAGE” spelled out in massive blue letters behind the stage, a reminder of each his personal far youthful age, 38, and the concept that he can be freed from the political entanglements and baggage that he ascribes to Mr. Biden and Mr. Sanders.
A political newcomer, he argues, would have each a greater probability of defeating Mr. Trump in a common election and a extra unfettered mandate to enact progressive insurance policies in Washington.
Lisa Lerer reported from Decorah, and Reid J. Epstein from Des Moines.