LAS VEGAS — The dynamic that voters saw playing out between Bernie Sanders and Michael Bloomberg at Wednesday night's debate could be a glimpse of general election tactics and strategies, the Vermont senator's presidential campaign manager told the Washington Examiner.

Speaking after the debate, Faiz Shakir responded to the former New York City mayor's claims that only his campaign can compete with Sanders and finance a serious challenge for the Democratic nomination.

"I welcome them making whatever contrast they'd like. I think the contrast that [Bloomberg] wants to draw with us is just like the contrast Donald Trump wants to draw. 'I'm a billionaire, I can't be bought, but by the way, all of my friends are all billionaires, and I'm out of touch with the working class of America, all my policies forever and ever have been always out of touch with the working class,'" Shakir said. "What I saw tonight with him and Bernie and Bloomberg having a debate, I saw a preview of coming attractions of how Bernie will take on Donald Trump."

Shakir's remarks reflected the feeling within the Sanders campaign that it doesn't see Bloomberg as a serious primary challenger. If anything, the Sanders campaign believes Bloomberg's entry is an asset to its message about inequality and the corrupting influence of money in politics.

"When you say you have $60 billion, you have more wealth than 125 million Americans, your effective tax rate of you and your class is lower than the working class of this country, you can already start to see how Bernie Sanders will make the argument against Donald Trump," Shakir said.

Sanders's attacks on Bloomberg during the debate echoed many of the remarks directed at the president he has made on the campaign trail.

"We have a grotesque and immoral distribution of wealth and income. Mike Bloomberg owns more wealth than the bottom 125 million Americans. That's wrong," Sanders said, later claiming Bloomberg's vast wealth was because he had "written the tax code."

Since he launched his campaign last year, Sanders has positioned his campaign against Trump as one representing the working class in the face of the country's takeover by "oligarchs" such as the president.