2020 race: Gloves off as Democrats’ fight gets dirty

Rising US presidential candidate Pete Buttigieg has hit back at his more ­experienced rival Joe Biden as brawls among all Democratic contenders escalated.

Democratic presidential candidate Pete Buttigieg takes centre stage in Nashua, New Hampshire, on Sunday. Picture: AP

Rising US presidential candidate Pete Buttigieg has hit back at his more ­experienced rival Joe Biden as brawls among all Democratic contenders escalated ahead of the crucial New Hampshire primary on Wednesday (AEDT).

The growing tensions reflected the high stakes of a poll that is certain to reduce the 11-person field fighting for their party’s nomination to take on Donald Trump in November.

Mr Buttigieg portrayed the 77-year-old former vice-president as yesterday’s man and when asked to respond to Mr Biden’s jibe that he was no Barack Obama, Mr ­Buttigieg said: “Neither is he.”

“Well, he’s right, I’m not. And neither is he. Neither is any of us running for president,” the 38-year-old former mayor of South Bend, Indiana, said. “This isn’t 2008, it’s 2020 and we are in a new moment calling for a different kind of leadership.”

Later, in a rally in Salem, New Hampshire, Mr Buttigieg took another shot at Mr Biden’s promise to turn the clock back to the days of the Obama presidency.

“We have to make sure that we don’t take the risk of falling back on the same playbook as in the past because it is a fundamentally new challenge,” Mr Buttigieg said to cheers from the crowd.

Mr Buttigieg, whose popularity in New Hampshire has soared since his strong performance in last week’s Iowa caucus, was responding to a series of personal ­attacks by Mr Biden, who has adopted a more aggressive campaign stand on the hustings since his disappointing fourth place in Iowa. The Democratic Party on Sunday declared that Mr Buttigieg would be the projected narrow winner in Iowa, taking 14 delegates to the ­national convention to 12 for rival senator Bernie Sanders.

“Oh come on man, this guy’s not Barack Obama,” Mr Biden had said as he released a mocking campaign ad, comparing the global ­decisions he made as vice-president to the local decisions Mr ­Buttigieg made as major of a city of 100,000 people.

Mr Buttigieg and Mr Biden are competing to win the support of the party’s moderate wing against the liberal wing backing the big spending agendas of Senator Sanders and senator Elizabeth Warren, who came third in Iowa.

The 78-year-old Senator Sanders, the frontrunner in New Hampshire, has also stepped up his attacks on Mr Buttigieg as polls show the gay Rhodes scholar and military veteran has narrowed the gap on the eve of the poll.

Senator Sanders attacked Mr Buttigieg for accepting money from rich donors to fund his campaign, saying “change is not going to be coming from somebody who gets a lot of money from the CEOs of the pharmaceutical industry”.

Mr Buttigieg fired back on Monday (AEDT) saying: “Bernie is pretty rich, and I would happily ­accept a contribution from him.”

Mr Buttigieg has attacked Senator Sanders’s liberal big-spending agenda as inflexible and amounting to a “revolution”.

“(With Senator Sanders) you are either for a revolution or you must be for the status quo — most of us don’t know where we fit and would rather be part of a movement that makes room for all of us,” he told a rally in Salem.

Polls suggest Mr Buttigieg has been closing on Senator Sanders’s narrow lead in New Hampshire, with a Boston Globe/WBZ-TV/­Suffolk University poll showing Senator Sanders on 24 per cent to 22 per cent for Mr Buttigieg. Senator Warren was next with 13 per cent, followed by Mr Biden on 10 per cent.

In a new CBS poll, Senator Sanders had 29 per cent support among likely New Hampshire voters, and Mr Buttigieg had 25 per cent.

Mr Biden is fighting for his political survival in New Hampshire after his poor showing in Iowa, as are senators Warren and Amy Klobuchar, who came fifth in Iowa.

Mr Biden, who was the frontrunner for most of last year and still leads in national polls, needs to have a credible showing in New Hampshire to ensure he does not lose all momentum.

The former vice-president on Monday described the New Hampshire primary as “an uphill fight … but it’s a fight that I think we’ll do well in”.

Mr Biden, who enjoys strong support among African-Americans and Latinos, is expected to perform better in the next two primaries, in Nevada and South Carolina, where there are more minority voters

Senator Warren, 70, was upbeat in reassuring her supporters in Manchester, New Hampshire.

“Here’s the thing: there are a lot of folks out there that are starting to get worried that this fight might not be winnable,” she said.

“You know, the way I look at this, I’ve been winning unwin­nable fights pretty much all my life. The fight to have a federal agency to keep people from getting cheated … the fight to hold corporate ­executives accountable.’’

The outcome in New Hampshire will play a crucial role in ­shaping the race, which has already seen both Senator Sanders and Mr Buttigieg become the new front­runners after their virtual dead-heat in Iowa.

No Democrat nominee has gone on to be president without finishing in the top two places in New Hampshire.

Cameron Stewart is also US contributor for Sky News Australia