Hillary Clinton’s campaign once again dinged the U.S.’s economic recovery under President Obama. Spokeswoman Karen Finney said that under Obama, many middle-class families "slipped" into a lower rung.
"One of the things we saw though over these last eight years in terms of the recovery is a lot of families, as you point out, actually slipped out of the middle class and into being part of the working poor or somewhere in between," Finney said in an interview.
A major critique of Obama’s economic policy is the recovery has only been realized for those at the top, and not for the middle class. Rising inequality has become a popular theme of presidential campaigns on both sides.
With labor participation levels at an all-time low, Clinton is walking a fine line. She is touting Obama’s successes while distancing herself from the president’s record on certain issues. Sen. Bernie Sanders (D., Vt.) highlights a number of these, such as the real unemployment rate being 10.5%, at his campaign stops.
"While America is standing again, we’re not yet running the way we should," Clinton said in her economic address that "didn’t offer much novelty."