Why '90s-era Bill Clinton would fail to win the 2016 Democratic nomination

Hillary Clinton is running on her husband's legacy. But the Democratic Party's progressive base is highly critical of that centrist record.

Vintage Bill.
(Image credit: TIM CLARY/AFP/Getty Images)

During Bill Clinton's presidency, the U.S. economy grew at a blazing 4 percent annually and created 23 million new jobs. Incomes grew rapidly, and not just for the rich. That impressive record helped make Clinton the first elected, two-term Democratic president since FDR.

And yet, when it comes to Hillary Clinton's presidential campaign, talking up old-school Clintonomics is more of a general election strategy than something that will send a tingle up the legs of the Democratic Party's progressive base. In that sense, it's small wonder that it's only now that Hillary Clinton is offering a "repeated embrace of [President Bill Clinton's] economic successes" — because only now does she have "growing confidence in her position in the Democratic primary," as The New York Times puts it.

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James Pethokoukis

James Pethokoukis is the DeWitt Wallace Fellow at the American Enterprise Institute where he runs the AEIdeas blog. He has also written for The New York Times, National Review, Commentary, The Weekly Standard, and other places.