Pete Buttigieg: Joe Biden the ‘Biggest Risk’ to Defeating Donald Trump

Former Mayor Pete Buttigieg suggested on Thursday that nominating former Vice President Joe Biden to run for president would be the “biggest risk” for Democrats eager to defeat President Donald Trump.

Buttigieg said:

I hear Vice President Biden saying that this is no time to take a risk on someone new. But history has shown us that the biggest risk we could take with a very important election coming up is to look at the same Washington playbook and recycle the same arguments and expect that to work against a president like Donald Trump who is new in kind.

Buttigieg specifically referred to Biden while campaigning, an unusual step for the former South Bend mayor who has resisted criticizing his 2020 rivals by name.

“This is no time to get caught up in reliving arguments from before,” he continued. “The less 2020 resembles 2016 in our party the better.”

Buttigieg also criticized Sen. Bernie Sanders for campaigning on a message of purity.

“Then I hear Sen. Sanders calling for a kind of politics that says you got to go all the way here and nothing else counts,” he said, noting that he was worried that a message of purity would scare away moderate voices.

“We’ve got to galvanize not polarize that American majority so we can win and we can get things done,” he said.

Buttigieg argued that American people had reached historic majorities on key issues on health care, gun control, college affordability, which he would bring together to change the laws in the country.

The former mayor appeared to be struggling with a cough during his town hall in Iowa as he continues crisscrossing the state for several campaign events prior to the Iowa caucuses on Monday. Both Biden and Sanders are leading the polls in the state.

He also said that his youth was an asset to the world, allowing Americans to lead the way for the next generation of world leaders.

“One thing that the presidents of France, the leader of Finland, New Zealand, folks across the world right now have in common is that they took office at an age that’s the same or younger than when I’d take office,” he said. “Usually I would think that that’s the change that America would be leading, this time we’re kind of playing catch up.”