WASHINGTON — Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders has launched an offensive against former Vice President Joe Biden in the days since last week’s “Super Tuesday” results made the Democratic presidential primary a race between the two men.Sanders’s push, which has included speeches and mediaappearances, has focused on criticizing aspects of Biden’s record, including past support for the Iraq War, the Wall Street bailout, and cuts to Social Security. The pair have also traded blows on the airwaves with Sanders launching an ad highlighting Biden’s past calls for freezing Social Security to help balance the budget and Biden responding with a commercial of his own accusing Sanders of engaging in a “false” and “negative attack.” On Sunday, the Sanders campaign sent a memo to surrogates and endorsers urging them to double down on the Social Security critique while highlighting Sanders’s “lifelong fight to defend social security.”“Biden clearly knows this is an enormous weakness in the Democratic primary, and it would be a major political vulnerability in a general election. Bernie does not have that same vulnerability -- unlike Biden, Bernie has unwaveringly fought to protect and expand Social Security for his entire career,” said the memo, which Yahoo News obtained from a campaign source.The document included a four-page “review” of moments dating back to 1983 in which Biden expressed openness to cutting Social Security and backed legislation that could have led to cuts. Those quotes surfaced by the Sanders campaign include a 1998 press release from Biden’s Senate office that boasted he was “one of [the] Senate’s most conservative Democrats.” According to the press release, that statement was based on a National Journal analysis of Biden’s 1997 votes including his support for “banning late-term abortions” and backing a constitutional amendment designed to balance the federal budget.“Ideological labels have never guided my votes," Biden said in the press release. "I look at the merits of an issue, how it impacts people in Delaware, how it shapes national policies, and I follow my conscience. National Journal's voting analysis, however, confirms what I have been saying for the past several years -- moderates from both parties are the key political force in the Senate to getting the job done in Congress for the American people." _____Read more from Yahoo News:
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