Biden opted out on 2016 Dem race because he ‘couldn’t win’

Clinton said Saturday in Iowa that Sanders’ remarks came with a gender-related undercurrent.

Later in the speech, Clinton said, “It’s not enough to just rail against Republicans and billionaires, we have to win this election”. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., took a series of veiled, yet unmistakable jabs at former secretary of state Hillary Rodham Clinton, saying that he would govern on principle.

Bernie Sanders ratcheted up his fire against Hillary Clinton on Saturday night here in Iowa, departing from his normal stump speech to draw repeated contrasts with the former secretary of state.

Clinton and Sanders sit atop a Democratic presidential field that was effectively pared down to two after Vice President Joe Biden announced this week he would not seek the nomination.

He pointed out that he had taken a number of liberal positions before they were popular: opposed the 1996 Defense of Marriage Act, which Clinton’s husband signed into law; opposed the Keystone XL pipeline while she equivocated for years; had been against a number of trade agreements that she either supported or came to oppose much later, and voted against the 2003 Iraq invasion, which she voted to approve. Clinton had made a press release to that impact in the course of the Democratic presidential debate earlier this month. On Saturday, she hit Sanders on gun control, an issue where the Vermont senator is notably more conservative than many in the Democratic Party.

“She’s still got the best friends that she had in grade school”, the former president said, saying that it made her by “definition a trustworthy, reliable good person”. “That’s not the case”. “It’s not Hillary Clinton”.

Clinton placed third in Iowa in 2008 and has since built a formidable organization to power her to victory here.

Eight years ago, Obama suggested Clinton was motivated by polls and triangulation while the then-New York senator countered that “change is just a word” unless you have the strength and experience to lead.

He said the measure was pushed by GOP lawmakers – and “many of them, I’m sorry to say, were homophobic”.

“The Hillary Clinton of 2015 is no different than the Hillary Clinton from 2007, who at the time refused to be straightforward with Iowans”, said Republican National Committee spokesman Fred Brown.

Clinton’s featured a performance by pop megastar Katy Perry, who wore an American flag as a cape from her white sequined gown, and a warm-up speech by former president Bill Clinton, who was making his first appearance of the campaign in Iowa on his wife’s behalf.

Across the Des Moines River, supporters of Sanders gathered for a pre-dinner enthusiasm booster of their own.

Clinton’s campaign has been on an upswing this month.

To a few Democrats in the room, the harder-edged Sanders was a direct response to the fact Clinton has had a strong October, culminating in her poised appearance at the 11-hour hearing on Benghazi earlier this week.

The latest poll by the Des Moines Register and Bloomberg Politics found that Clinton and Sanders are locked in a relatively tight race in this state.

Playing the role of underdog, Sanders drew a comparison with Obama. “If I thought we could’ve put together the crusade that, in that our supporters deserve and our contributors deserved …”

“But there was not what was kind of made out as sort of this Hollywood-esque factor that, on the final minute, Beau grabbed my hand and stated, ‘Dad, you have to run, ‘ like win one for the Gipper”, Biden stated.