Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., might be saying voters want a revolution, but Americans are not looking for that, former Vice President Joe Biden, Sanders' closest challenger for the Democrats' presidential nomination insists.
"They're looking for progress," Biden told NBC "Today" correspondent Craig Melvin on Wednesday. "They're looking for 'Tell me how you're going to help me with my healthcare. Tell me you'll make me safer."
Biden agreed with Melvin when he noted some of Sanders' supporters "seem keen on a revolution," but only to a point.
"Look at the numbers," Biden said. "We always talk about this great increase in participation. He's nowhere near — he's not going to come anywhere near generating the kind of participation of young folks that Barack [Obama] did in 2008. There's no evidence of that yet."
Biden said he does believe, as South Carolina's primary approaches, there are many young people who are "supportive of a more, I won't say rational, a more practical path to get things done."
Sanders is running just behind Biden in South Carolina, and during a rally Wednesday said one cannot run a conventional campaign and beat Trump.
"I say to my good friend, Joe Biden, 'Joe, you can't do it when you have voted for terrible trade policies,'" Sanders said, adding and "'strongly supported the war in Iraq.'"
"Joe is a friend of mine and a decent guy, but that is not the voting record or the history that is going to excite people, bring them into the political process and beat Trump," Sanders concluded.
Sandy Fitzgerald ✉
Sandy Fitzgerald has more than three decades in journalism and serves as a general assignment writer for Newsmax covering news, media, and politics.
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