Former Vice President Joe Biden has clearly been the frontrunner among the Democratic 2020 candidates since entering the race, but the fact that he is a long-serving member of the Washington political establishment with a generally centrist and moderate track record, there is a portion of the ideological left that has deemed him inadequate to be their party’s nominee for president.
That was more or less the view expressed over the weekend by Democrat Minnesota Rep. Ilhan Omar after an event in Iowa organized by a far-left activist group, as she clearly insinuated that Biden was not progressive enough to satisfy her or others among ranks of the progressive left.
Omar slams Biden’s moderate centrism
The Guardian reported that Omar was the keynote speaker at an event on Saturday known as the Iowa People’s Presidential Forum, an event organized by a collective of left-leaning grassroots groups that was meant as a counter to the establishment-favored Polk County Steak Fry event that was attended by 17 candidates and received ample media coverage.
During the leftist forum — which Biden did not attend — Omar said in her speech that the nation needed “a president who realises we are not just fighting for one election, we are fighting for the very soul of our democracy and what society we want to become.”
Following her speech at the forum, a reporter caught up with Omar and asked where Biden fit in with her vision of the sort of president that was needed at this time. In short, he doesn’t at all.
Biden insufficiently progressive
“There are few people who fit into the kind of progress that we all want to see in this country, and I would say he is not one of them,” Omar said with a smile.
“I think it has been very clear to many of the people who have been creating the kind of movement that is exciting generations, that we want somebody who really has a plan that is going to tackle a lot of the systematic challenges that we have,” she continued.
“And he doesn’t” have such a plan, Omar added.
Watch below:
Far-left favorites
The Guardian noted that only four candidates made an appearance at the Iowa People’s Presidential Forum — Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren, Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders, South Bend Mayor Pete Buttigieg, and former Obama HUD Secretary Julian Castro.
Biden had originally been invited to appear at the forum, but the offer was withdrawn when his campaign failed to complete and return a questionnaire that was previously sent to all of the candidates.
Sanders and Warren drew the warmest response from the roughly 2,000-strong far-left crowd, and given that Warren has recently surpassed Biden in a key Iowa poll and the former VP has been summarily dismissed by Omar, the bad news just keeps coming for the national frontrunner and prospective nominee.