I take running for president and being president really seriously. It's a - maybe the toughest job in the world, right? And I knew that there was unfinished business from the successful two terms of President Obama, whom I had served, but that we needed to go further on the economy, on health care, and so much else.

In America, we've been around for 240 years. We've had free and fair elections. We've accepted the outcomes when we may not have liked them. And that is what must be expected of anyone standing on a debate stage during a general election.

We've got to reach out to Muslim countries.We've got to have them be part of our coalition. If they hear people running for president who basically shortcut it to say we are somehow against Islam, that was one of the real contributions, despite all the other problems, that George W. Bush made after 9/11 when he basically said after going to a Mosque in Washington, we are not at war with Islam or Muslims.

I'm a progressive who likes to get things done.

Senator [Ben] Sanders and I share some very big progressive goals. I've been fighting for universal healthcare for many years, and we're now on the path to achieving it. I don't want us to start over again. I think that would be a great mistake, to once again plunge our country into a contentious debate about whether we should have and what kind of system we should have for healthcare.

I am not going to wait and have us plunge back into a contentious national debate that has very little chance of succeeding. Let's make the Affordable Care Act work for everybody.

When we didn't succeed at healthcare reform back in 1993, 1994, I went to work with Democrats and Republicans and we created the Children's Health Insurance Program.