Former Vice President Joe Biden said on Monday that he was more of a Democrat than most of the candidates running in the 2020 Democratic primary.
“I’m more of a Democrat from my shoe sole to my ears than about anybody running in this party, OK?” Biden told an audience at a CNN town hall in Grinnell, Iowa.
Biden was responding to a Medium post he wrote last week, in which he criticized progressive Sen. Elizabeth Warren’s (D-Mass.) approach to politics.
“Including her?” host Erin Burnett asked.
{mosads}”Including everyone,” he responded.
The Democratic primary has gotten increasingly competitive at the national level, as well as in a number of early contest states including Iowa.
Biden, who was once seen as the race’s solid front-runner, has fallen behind Warren in a number of state-level polls.
The two candidates traded barbs last week after Warren suggested Biden’s reasons for not supporting “Medicare for All” seemed like they were coming from someone “running in the wrong presidential primary.”
Biden fired back in the Medium post without naming Warren, saying “these kinds of attacks are a serious problem” and “reflect an angry unyielding viewpoint that has crept into our politics.”
The former vice president also said that such an “approach to politics” is “condescending” and “elitist.”
“I wasn’t talking about her,” Biden said on Monday. “I was talking about the attitude that ‘if you don’t agree with me, get in the other party.’ “