Sanders won’t take up the Obama mantle

Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) is not interested in continuing President Obama’s legacy, saying he would go “further” than the president to tackle the defining issues of the day.

“I think we’ve got to go further,” the White House hopeful said on MSNBC’s “All in with Chris Hayes” on Wednesday night. “I think we need to stand up to Wall Street in a way that the president and the vice president have not.” 

{mosads}He said Obama and Vice President Biden, who announced on Wednesday that he will not run for president, were “not really” interested in creating a “political revolution” to overthrow the corporate interests he says have taken over Washington.

“We need to mobilize tens of millions of people to begin to stand up and fight back and to reclaim the government, which is now owned by big money,” Sanders said. “Do I think that that was the work — was that the goal of the president and the vice president? Not really, I don’t think so.” 

Although Sanders praised the president for leading the nation in the recovery from the financial crisis, he said several issues, such as rising college tuition prices and widening income inequality, were left unaddressed. 

The Vermont senator said there’s no “tension” in his pessimistic campaign rhetoric and support of the president’s record in office. 

“We should give Obama and Biden credit for what they have accomplished, and understand that we need to go much further,” he said. 

With the announcement that Biden will not seek the party’s nomination, there is no obvious successor to the Obama legacy in the Democratic primary field.

Front-runner Hillary Clinton, who lost to Obama in a combative 2008 primary, has been reluctant to run on the president’s record.

She publicly broke with the White House on several key issues, such as the Trans-Pacific Partnership, a trade agreement she helped broker while serving in the Obama administration, and the president’s foreign policy in Syria.