(CNN) — Democratic Rep. Ilhan Omar indicated this weekend that she doesn’t think Joe Biden should get her party’s presidential nomination, arguing that the former vice president isn’t progressive enough to excite voters.
“There are few people who fit into the kind of progress that we all want to see in this country,” Omar said after she gave a keynote address at a candidates forum in Iowa, according to a report from The Guardian published Saturday. “And I would say (Biden) is not one of them.”
“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, and he doesn’t,” the Minnesota lawmaker added, according to the paper.
Omar’s office confirmed the comments to CNN.
The comments from the progressive congresswoman were made as a number of the 2020 Democratic candidates pitched themselves this weekend in the first-in-the-nation caucus state as the best contender to take on President Donald Trump. Biden, the pack’s centrist front-runner, has faced tough criticism from his fellow candidates for his record, which some have knocked as not being progressive enough.
Support for Biden in the state appeared to have waned this weekend after a new CNN/Des Moines Register/Mediacom poll of likely Iowa caucusgoers found that the former vice president slipped 3 percentage points since June, while Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren, who is known for her progressive, working-class-focused views, stood at 22% in the poll, up 7 percentage points since the last poll.
Next month, Biden may face more questions about how progressive his record is during the fourth presidential debate, hosted in Westerville, Ohio, by CNN and The New York Times.
