Sen. Bernie Sanders took aim at South Bend Mayor Pete Buttigieg and former Vice President Joe Biden for receiving campaign contributions from billionaires, during Thursday night’s Democratic primary debate.
While the Sanders campaign had criticized Buttigieg earlier this week for recently holding a private big-money fundraiser in a wine cellar — going so far as purchasing the domain www.peteswinecave.com — the Vermont senator went on the attack on the stage in Los Angeles.
“Now there’s a real competition going on up here,” Sanders said. “My good friend Joe, and he is a good friend, he’s received contributions from 44 billionaires. Pete on the other hand, is trailing, you only got 39 billionaires contributing.”
“So Pete, we look forward to you — I know you’re an energetic guy and a competitive guy — to see if you can take on Joe on that issue,” Sanders added.
This was the first of the six Democratic presidential primary debates in which Sanders has gone after an opponent by name on an issue other than health care.
Prior to taking the stage, it was unclear if different candidates would be combative.
A Biden campaign official told the Wall Street Journal that the former vice president thought it would be a mistake for candidates to attack each other only a day after the House of Representatives voted to impeach President Donald Trump.
But the candidates decided against this rationale and traded barbs throughout the three-hour debate, with Sanders criticizing Biden for his vote in favor of the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), the former vice president’s support for the Iraq War and disagreement over health care proposals.
The 78-year-old Vermont senator also took issue with recent comments made by former President Barack Obama that it is old men that are to blame for most of the world’s current problems.
“I think I disagree with him on this one. Maybe a little self-serving but I do disagree,” Sanders said. “The issue is where power resides in America and it’s not white or black or male or female.”
“We are living in a nation increasingly becoming an oligarchy, where you have a handful of billionaires who spent hundreds of millions of dollars buying elections, and politicians,” he added.
When Biden was asked about his opinion of Obama’s comments, he said he was going to “guess he wasn’t talking about me.”
Sanders also stressed the importance of addressing climate change during the first half of the Democratic primary debate — even when asked unrelated questions.
“We have got to, and I’ve introduced legislation to do this, declare a national emergency,” said Sanders, who has put forward a $16 trillion climate action plan.
“Instead of spending $1.8 trillion a year globally on weapons of destruction, maybe an American president, i.e. Bernie Sanders, can lead the world,” he added. “Instead of spending the money to kill each other, maybe we pool our resources and fight our common enemy which is climate change.”
Asked about there being only one person of color on the debate stage and the importance of connecting with non-white voters, Sanders again brought it back to climate change and the environment.
“I wanted to get back to your issue of climate change for a moment, because I do believe this is the existential issue,” began Sanders before the moderator cut him off to cheers from the crowd — pressing the Vermont senator to answer the question as asked.
“People of color in fact, are going to be the people suffering most if we do not deal with climate change,” Sanders stressed.
