Joe Biden said today that Pete Buttigieg must be attacking him because “things are getting a little tight,” but the front runner went after Bernie Sanders today by claiming the leftist senator isn’t a Democrat.

“I’m a Democrat,” Biden said in contrasting his record with that of Sanders.

“And he’s not in your view?” a reporter asked.

“Well, he says he’s not a registered Democrat to the best of my knowledge,” he said, echoing a similar dig Hillary Clinton made against the socialist in 2016.

During the same Dairy Queen appearance, Biden was asked about Buttigieg’s “Washington playbook” jab.

“He must be deciding things are getting a little tight,” Biden said dismissively.

“I’m not sure what he means.”

“I hear Vice President Biden saying that this is no time to take a risk on someone new. But history has shown us that the biggest risk we could take with a very important election coming up is to look to the same Washington playbook and recycle the same arguments and expect that to work against a president like Donald Trump,” Buttigieg said in Decorah, Iowa, on Thursday, the Washington Examiner reports.

According to CBS’s Bo Erickson, Biden noted he’s “gotten more than 8,600 votes in his life.”

Biden last ran nationwide while Buttigieg ran for mayor in the tiny city of South Bend, Indiana.