WASHINGTON _ Sen. Bernie Sanders looked to stake out ground as the only true progressive in the 2020 Democratic race, calling Sen. Elizabeth Warren, who's been rising steadily in opinion polls, "a capitalist through her bones."
Sanders spoke about Warren in an interview to be broadcast Sunday on "This Week," an ABC News program.
The latest polls show Warren of Massachusetts running neck-and-neck with _ or in some cases ahead of _ former Vice President Joe Biden at the top of the large Democratic primary field. Sanders, who ran as a progressive alternative to Hillary Clinton in 2016, is running in third place in most national surveys.
"There are differences between Elizabeth and myself," Sanders of Vermont said in the interview. "Elizabeth, I think, as you know, has said that she is a capitalist through her bones. I'm not."
In 2018 Warren told the New England Council, a regional business organization, that she was "a capitalist to her bones," although many of her policy proposals are aimed at narrowing economic inequality in the U.S. She's laid out a vision of what she calls "accountable capitalism."
"I am, I believe, the only candidate who's going to say to the ruling class of this country, the corporate elite: Enough," Sanders told ABC. "We need real change in this country."
"Elizabeth considers herself _ if I got the quote correctly _ to be a capitalist to her bones," he said. "I don't."
Sanders has been off the campaign trail since suffering a heart attack while in Las Vegas in late September. He's scheduled to return to campaigning in the next week, and will participate in Tuesday's Democratic primary debate in Ohio.
The Sanders campaign on Saturday announced a "Bernie's Back" rally in New York City on Oct. 19.
