Democratic front-runner Hillary Clinton contrasted herself from 2016 rival Bernie Sanders during the closing of Thursday night's presidential debate by framing him as a "single-issue candidate" who is not up for the broad challenges that America faces.
"We agree we've got to get unaccountable money out of politics. We agree that Wall Street should never again be allowed to wreck Main Street again," Clinton said, according to The Hill. "But here's the point I want to make tonight. I am not a single-issue candidate, and I do not believe we live in a single-issue country."
While Sanders spent much of the evening returning to issues of income inequality, healthcare and campaign finance issues, Clinton spoke to removing the broad array of obstacles "holding people back."
"I think that a lot of what we have to overcome to break down the barriers that are holding people back, whether it's poison in the water of the children of Flint, or whether it's the poor miners who are being left out and left behind in coal country, or whether it is any other American today who feels somehow put down and oppressed by racism, by sexism, by discrimination against the LGBT community, against the kind of efforts that need to be made to root out all of these barriers, that is what I want to take on," Clinton said, according to Vox.
Sanders' platform focuses on income inequality and campaign finance reform -- a message that has attracted many followers. It has, however, also been a subject of criticism, given the many foreign policy and national security challenges that the U.S. faces.
President Barack Obama signaled support for Clinton late last month with a veiled reference to Sanders in an interview, saying "the one thing everybody understands" about the presidency is "you don't have the the luxury of just focusing on one thing."
Obama suggested in an interview with Politico last month that while what the Sanders campaign is doing "is working," candidates will also have to show that they can handle a broad range of issues.
"I will say that the longer you go in the process, the more you're going to have to pass a series of hurdles that the voters are going to put in front of you, because the one thing everybody understands is that [with] this job right here, you don't have the luxury of just focusing on one thing," he said.
