While most of the Democratic presidential hopefuls were beating up on front runner Sen. Hillary Clinton during their debate on Tuesday in Philadelphia, Sen. Joseph Biden broke from the pack and took aim at the Republican leading candidate Rudy Giuliani. 

When asked whether he stood by his recent comments that his experience was “considerably deeper” and “more relevant” than that of Sen. Clinton’s, Biden did not take the bait. 

 ”I’m not running against Hillary Clinton. I’m running to lead the free world. I’m running to lead this country. And the irony is Rudy Giuliani is probably the most underqualified man since George Bush to seek the presidency,” Biden said.

And then Biden, who has largely polled in the single digits, was on a roll giving his take on the qualifications of the former New York mayor.

“Rudy Giuliani, I mean think about it, Rudy Giuliani. There’s only three things he mentions in a sentence: a noun and a verb and 9/11. I mean there’s nothing else. He is genuinely not qualified to be president,” Biden said, drawing one of the few audible reactions from the debate audience at Drexel University.

“This man is truly not qualified to be president. I’m looking forward to running against Rudy Giuliani.” (In contrast, Republican presidential candidates have mostly only mentioned Clinton during their debates.)

Giuliani’s campaign communications director Katie Levinson shot back that it was instead Biden who had no experience running anything.

“Wait, I take that back, Sen. Biden has never run anything but his mouth,” she said, a reference to several verbal miscues the Delaware senator has made.

Photo credit: Reuters/Larry Downing