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ROCK HILL, S.C. – A day after Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont sharply criticized Hillary Clinton for supporting a welfare overhaul bill in 1996, former President Bill Clinton mounted a detailed defense of the law on Thursday while restraining himself from attacking his wife’s opponent.

Repeatedly saying that the law did “way more good than harm,” Mr. Clinton, in brief remarks to The New York Times, offered a striking contrast to his fiery outbursts against Barack Obama in South Carolina before the state’s primary eight years ago. Back then, Mr. Clinton sharply defended himself and Mrs. Clinton from attacks by supporters of Mr. Obama, comments that upset many African-American Democrats who liked the Clintons but were supporting Mr. Obama.

With Mrs. Clinton in far better political shape heading into the South Carolina primary on Saturday than she was in 2008, Mr. Clinton surely saw less need to lace into Mr. Sanders. But his care with his words was notable given the harshness from Mr. Sanders, who said on Wednesday that Mrs. Clinton had rounded up votes for a welfare bill that, in his view, harmed “some of the weakest and most vulnerable people in this country.”

Mr. Clinton, in pushing back against Mr. Sanders, noted that during his presidency, median incomes for African-Americans rose sharply and the poverty rate declined; a record number of African-American-owned businesses opened; and the homicide rate for African-Americans tumbled. But he bemoaned cuts in federal subsidies to state assistance programs, which had been promised stable financing in the law.

“What happened was, the people who still needed some assistance didn’t get it,” Mr. Clinton said. “We were able to restore virtually all the cuts to legal immigrants that the Republicans demanded, we kept the guarantee of nutrition and health care. But the law needs to be changed to help the poorest of the poor.”

He added, “There’s no question that it did far more good than harm, and there’s no question that subsequent events showed it needs some improvement.”

Mr. Clinton, who never mentioned Mr. Sanders, made his comments after a campaign rally here where he barely mentioned the Vermont senator, instead offering a glimpse of a general election argument that Mrs. Clinton might make against Donald J. Trump. Mr. Clinton took issue with Mr. Trump’s political tagline, “Make America Great Again,” saying that America is a strong country that needed to do more to help people of all races and incomes, from struggling coal miners and small-business owners to African Americans and police officers who are divided by a lack of trust.

“I don’t think America ever stopped being great – we have to make America whole again,” Mr. Clinton told a couple of hundred supporters in Rock Hill, a modest-size city near the North Carolina border.

“How do we make America whole again? Well, we shouldn’t build a wall around this country. We should do what Hillary wants to do. We should tear down the barriers and build ladders to prosperity.”

While Mrs. Clinton has been decrying “systemic racism” in the criminal justice system ahead of the South Carolina primary, where more than half of Democratic voters are likely to be black, Mr. Clinton took a different tack here. He praised police officers generally and said that communities needed “neighborhood councils” and other groups that would build closer ties with beat cops and law enforcement officials.

“We need to put more police on the street that look like the communities they are policing,” Mr. Clinton said. “We all know that anytime people have a lot of guns, and there’s violence, and drugs are being sold, once in a while something’s going to happen that shouldn’t happen.”

He did not pass judgment on who was to blame in such incidents, but focused instead on the need for the police and community officials to work together.

“We need the police, we need the police, but we need a police that people trust are on their side,” Mr. Clinton said.

Throughout his speech, Mr. Clinton seemed to be reaching out to white voters at a time when Mrs. Clinton is explicitly courting African-Americans and Hispanics. Mr. Clinton said the government needed to do more to help coal miners whose livelihoods were being threatened by the steady decline in coal production. He called for making greater high-speed Internet broadband available in “every small town in rural America,” which would lead to new job opportunities for miners and others.

“Those coal miners in West Virginia didn’t do anything wrong,” Mr. Clinton said. “They kept the lights on for decades, their children fought in our wars.” Referring to miners as “our brothers and sisters,” he added that people of all races “deserve the chance to begin again.”

Sounding a little like Mr. Trump – whom he never mentioned by name – Mr. Clinton also called for tougher enforcement of trade deals and a tougher stance against China on currency manipulation.

“We’ve got to say, ‘Look, you can’t play us for suckers anymor’e,” Mr. Clinton said.

The former president also drew strong applause when he backed President Obama’s constitutional authority to nominate a new justice to the Supreme Court after the recent death of Antonin Scalia. “He should do his job and put up somebody,” he said.

Mr. Clinton repeatedly praised Mr. Obama while also noting that many Americans still had not rebounded with the improving economy.

“It takes 10 years to fully get over a financial crunch,” Mr. Clinton said. Referring to Mr. Obama’s State of the Union address last month, Mr. Clinton continued: “He painted this beautiful picture of the future, but the problem is, a lot of Americans are staring at this picture but can’t find themselves in it. Hillary is running for president to put every single American in that picture.”