Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., says Democratic presidential primary opponent Joe Biden has "a lot of baggage" that will bury him in the contest with President Donald Trump.
In an interview with The Washington Post, Sanders said Biden's record and ties to the political establishment make him ill-suited to win in November.
"It's just a lot of baggage that Joe takes into a campaign, which isn't going to create energy and excitement," Sanders told the Post. "He brings into this campaign a record which is so weak that it just cannot create the kind of excitement and energy that is going to be needed to defeat Donald Trump."
In the interview, Sanders also said Biden's past support of military intervention in Iraq would hurt him with young voters, while his support of free trade, including the North American Free Trade Agreement, would make him vulnerable in the industrial Midwest, where Trump scored victories in 2016.
"It doesn't take much imagination to understand that Trump will be saying, 'You see this guy? He voted for NAFTA,'" Sanders said.
"People are tired of the traditional types of campaigns in which candidates like Joe are running to wealthy people's homes and raising large sums of money," Sanders added.
An unnamed Biden aide called the Sanders digs "nothing new," and pointed to recent Mason-Dixon polls that show Biden running ahead of Trump in Florida and Virginia.
"That's based on real data, not rhetoric or wishful thinking," the aide told the Post.
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