Vermont Senator and Democratic presidential hopeful Bernie Sanders appeared on "All In With Chris Hayes" last night to discuss the trajectory of the Democratic primary -- in particular, whether the potential nominees would consider their candidacies a continuation of the Obama presidency.
Sanders said that while on issues like climate change, he could see himself embracing the Obama legacy, on the more significant issue of the influence of Wall Street on public policy, a Sanders administration would be vastly different than its predecessor.
"I think we've got to go further," he argued. "I think we need to stand up to Wall Street in a way that the President and the Vice President have not."
He noted, however, that "we seem to have forgotten as a nation where we were seven years ago before Biden and Obama took office, and you remember where we were."
"We were losing 800,000 jobs a month," Sanders continued. "These guys faced terrible obstructionism from Republicans, the financial system was on the verge of collapse, we were running up the largest deficit, and these guys worked together and led the country in bringing us to a place where we're obviously a lot better than what we were seven years ago."
But "the Democrats can't go around saying 'Gee, everything is good,'" he added.
"The truth is for 40 years -- four-zerp years -- the middle class has been disappearing. We have a corrupt campaign finance system as a result of Citizen United. We have more people in jail than any other country on earth, primarily black and Hispanic. So, we continue to have huge problems. But we should give Obama and Biden credit for what they have accomplished, and understand we need to go much further."
Watch the entire interview below via MSNBC.
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