Biden steps up attacks on Sanders as Super Tuesday approaches

Former Vice President Joe Biden followed up his resounding victory in the South Carolina presidential primary by taking aim at Democratic front-runner Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) on Sunday morning, describing the self-proclaimed democratic socialist as an electoral liability.

Appearing on NBC’s “Meet the Press,” Biden said Sanders would lose in a general election match-up with Trump.

“I think Bernie Sanders’s positions on a number of issues, even in the Democratic Party, are very controversial,” Biden said.

{mosads}“Everybody’s going to look at Bernie’s record as closely as they’ve looked at mine over the last five months, and I think they’re going to see some stark differences in where we stand,” he added.

Sanders leads Trump in head-to-head match-ups in most polling, both nationally and in battleground states.

In a separate appearance on ABC’s “This Week,” Biden argued that Democrats would run the risk of losing their House majority in the event of a Sanders nomination.

“I think he’ll have great trouble bringing along other senators, keeping the House of Representatives, winning back the Senate and down-ballot initiatives,” Biden said, adding that the choice between the two is “not about whether we restore the soul of the Democratic Party” but “about restoring the soul, uniting this country, the whole country, and I think I can do that.”

Biden also said he would contest the party nomination at the Democratic National Convention if Sanders leads with only a plurality of delegates. Sanders has said the candidate who goes into the convention with the most delegates should become the nominee even if they don’t have an outright majority, as the rules dictate.

“I wonder where [Sanders’s] view was when he was challenging Hillary [Clinton] when she went in with a commanding lead,” Biden told CNN’s Jake Tapper. “You don’t change the rules in the middle of the game.”

Biden continues to trail Sanders in pledged delegates ahead of Super Tuesday after the Vermont senator’s wins in New Hampshire and Nevada and popular vote win in the chaotic Iowa caucuses.

The former vice president also continued his attacks on Sanders’ accomplishments in the Senate after saying in Tuesday’s Democratic debate that the Vermont senator hadn’t accomplished “much of anything.” 

“People aren’t looking for a revolution. … They’re looking for results and getting things done,” Biden said Sunday on CNN’s “State of the Union.”

“Bernie doesn’t have a very good track record of getting things done in the U.S. Congress, in the U.S. Senate,” he added. “Much of what he’s proposing is very much pie in the sky.” 

Sanders, meanwhile, pushed back against Biden’s arguments on both “This Week” and CBS’s “Face the Nation.” 

“We’re gonna come together because we all understand that Donald Trump is the greatest threat to this country in the modern history of this country,” he said on ABC.

Biden also expressed confidence that his campaign could sustain the post-South Carolina momentum, even as polling indicates the advantage is with Sanders in Super Tuesday states.

“Super Tuesday’s not the end. It’s only the beginning,” he said on “This Week.” 

Although polling shows Sanders in the lead in states such as California and Texas, the contests ahead include states whose electorates include many of the same Southern African Americans who carried Biden to victory in South Carolina, such as Alabama, North Carolina and Virginia.