An excerpt of Hillary Clinton's interview on NBC's "Today Show" On Wednesday. Clinton: I never underestimated Sanders 'at all'

Hillary Clinton rejected the idea that her campaign went on the offensive against Bernie Sanders after the Vermont senator began gaining on her in the polls, the Democratic presidential candidate said Wednesday.

Appearing on NBC's "Today," the former secretary of state said she did not "at all" underestimate her opponent and that it is time for him to get specific about his ideas for the future of the country.


"I had a very different sense of the rhythm of this campaign," Clinton told Savannah Guthrie. "There was a lot for me to do to go around and meet with people, listen to them, put out my ideas. You know, I’ve been laying out very specific policies for months now, and telling people how I would pay for them. I’m asking that Senator Sanders does the same thing. We need to move now from generalization to specifics so people can see what the differences are. That’s what I’ve always planned to do, and that is what I’m doing."

The latest remarks come a day after Clinton told an Iowa crowd it's time to "get real" about the election less than three weeks ahead of the caucuses, the same day that two new polls suggested that Sanders has overtaken her in Iowa and continues to build a double-digit lead in New Hampshire.

While rejecting the notion that she is suggesting Sanders is not running a campaign grounding in reality, Clinton returned to the talking points that she has been hammering on the trail for the last few days, namely on differences pertaining to health care and gun safety.

"I want to build on the Affordable Care Act. We’ve got to make some changes because we’ve got to improve it," she said. "He’s been talking very generally about a single-payer system. He’s introduced legislation nine times that laid out a very specific plan to take everyone’s health care and roll it into a great big bundle and hand it to the states. But my view is we shouldn’t be ripping up Obamacare and starting over. We should be building on it.”

Clinton also hit Sanders as "a pretty reliable vote for the gun lobby," alluding to the senator's past voting record protecting gun manufacturers from liability.

"So these are the kinds of differences that people deserve to know about as they make up their minds," she said.

As far as Donald Trump and his frequent invocation of her husband's sexual misconduct is concerned, Clinton declined to respond in kind.

“Oh, I’m not going to engage with him on these matters. The voters can make up their minds," she remarked. "I am going to continue to point out what his proposed policies would meant to our country and to hard-working middle-class families across our country. And he has been very dismissive about equal pay for equal work, about raising the minimum wage, which has two-thirds of minimum-wage workers being women, and some of the other, you know, changes and kinds of policies that he trumpets. So, I’m going to let him answer for himself. I’m not going to respond to his personal attacks, if that’s what he wants to engage in."