Senator Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts, returning to Iowa after a week attending the Senate impeachment trial of President Trump, took an implicit jab at Mr. Sanders during an event in Cedar Rapids as she made the case that she could appeal to a broad range of voters.
“I’ve been building a campaign that’s not a campaign that’s narrow — that’s not a campaign that says it’s us and nobody else,” Ms. Warren told voters at an event in Cedar Rapids. “But a campaign that says come on in because we are all in this fight together.” Ms. Warren did not refer to Mr. Sanders by name, but her language echoed an ongoing Democratic line of attack about Mr. Sanders, a democratic socialist, being an us vs. everyone else candidate.
In another attempt to project unity, Ms. Warren hailed candidates who had left the race, and said she was proud that some of their staff members had decided to join her campaign. Ms. Warren’s internal numbers, according to a person familiar with the data, show that half of her 2020 support comes from people who caucused for Mr. Sanders in 2016, and the other half comes from people who caucused for Mrs. Clinton.
Similarly, Senator Amy Klobuchar knocked Mr. Sanders’s plan for “Medicare for all” within minutes of returning to the campaign trail after being tethered to Washington for impeachment. Though she too did not mention Mr. Sanders by name, Ms. Klobuchar pointed to the Affordable Care Act as a way to rebuild the “blue wall” of Midwest states that she said would bring Democrats victory in 2020.
“I don’t think we should be blowing it up,” she said of the A.C.A., in front of a crowd of roughly 500 in Bettendorf. “I think we should be making it better.”
Former Vice President Joseph R. Biden took swipes at both Mr. Sanders and Mr. Buttigieg as he spoke to an undecided voter, Jaimee Warbasse, at an event in Cedar Rapids.
“Everything I say, I’ve done, and everything I talk about is authentic,” Mr. Biden told Ms. Warbasse. “Now, if you don’t like what I’m talking about, I understand. You can be for somebody else. But ask yourself, who is going to be able to unite the country? How can Pete do that? How can Bernie do that? And so ask yourself that question.”