DES MOINES, Iowa -- When Joe Biden released a video Tuesday night suggesting that Bernie Sanders' campaign was engaging in "dishonest attacks" over Biden's record on Social Security, it created an opportunity that some Sanders advisers had hoped for months would come.The Sanders campaign
DES MOINES, Iowa — When Joe Biden released a video Tuesday night suggesting that Bernie Sanders’ campaign was engaging in “dishonest attacks” over Biden’s record on Social Security, it created an opportunity that some Sanders advisers had hoped for months would come.
“When people want to attack, we will counterpunch, and we will counterpunch very aggressively,” Faiz Shakir, Sanders’ campaign manager, said in an interview Wednesday. Over the weekend, Biden accused the Sanders campaign of deliberately distorting his record on Social Security, prompting Shakir to issue a scathing attack on Biden. On Monday, Sanders apologized to Biden after a top surrogate for the Sanders campaign published an op-ed that claimed the former vice president had “a big corruption problem.”
On Wednesday morning, in an interview on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe,” Biden demurred when asked if the attacks from the Sanders campaign were dishonest. But in suggesting that his past statements on Social Security were being taken out of context, he invoked Sanders’ record on gun control, an area that has previously drawn scrutiny for the senator from Vermont.
Sanders’ newly combative posture has been met with some relief inside his campaign: With the two men competing for an overlapping slice of working-class voters, some top aides have been quietly urging Sanders to draw more explicit contrasts with the former vice president. Not only would such an offensive help Sanders whittle away at Biden’s support, some advisers believe, but it would also satisfy supporters and donors to Sanders who crave a fight.
Aides said Sanders has been true to his word, highlighting differences in his record while adhering to his long-standing opposition to personal attacks.
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