Former Vice President Joe Biden vowed on Wednesday to go on fighting for the Democratic presidential nomination despite what he called the “gut punch” he took in Iowa, where he lagged in fourth place, Reuters informed.
With 97% of precincts reporting from Monday’s caucuses, Biden was behind former South Bend, Indiana Mayor Pete Buttigieg and U.S. Senators Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren in the first nominating contest of the 2020 campaign.
“I am not going to sugarcoat it: We took a gut punch in Iowa. The whole process was a gut punch,” Biden said in Somersworth, New Hampshire, where he was campaigning. “This isn’t the first time in my life that I’ve been knocked down.”
Biden, who bills himself as the most electable Democratic candidate to take on Republican President Donald Trump in the November 3 election, led many national polls in the run-up to Iowa and has a host of high-profile endorsements, Reuters adds.
“There are an awful lot of folks out there who wrote off this campaign. … They’ve been trying to do that from the moment I entered the race. Well, I’ve got news for them. I’m not going anywhere,” Biden said.
In an unusually direct address, Biden took aim at Sanders and Buttigieg as he tried to recover ahead of the New Hampshire state primary next Tuesday.
Biden, 77, said every Democrat running for the House of Representatives or Senate this year would have to carry the label “socialist” if Sanders became the Democratic nominee. An independent, Sanders calls himself a democratic socialist.
Buttigieg, 38, held a very narrow lead over Sanders, 78, in the Iowa caucuses, according to partial results released on Wednesday. Problems with an app used for vote counting had delayed a final count. Warren, 70, placed third.
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