Hillary’s brand survives a generational shift
Party platform, and its candidate, changed radically
“She is the modern version of the Clinton politics and agenda, fit for a totally different era.”
Jonathan Cowan, president of Third Way
The last time a Democratic National Convention nominated a Clinton for president, the party faithful were celebrating free trade, fighting crime, deficit reduction and welfare reform.
That was Bill Clinton’s final campaign as a “new Democrat,” one whose claim to fame was being able to negotiate with the likes of Newt Gingrich and Bob Dole. First lady Hillary Clinton, after a star-crossed turn as health care czar, spoke to delegates at the Chicago convention about raising children.
The party has changed radically since then. A 74-year-old socialist nearly won its presidential nomination with policy prescriptions that would have been out of place in 1996. And yet Hillary Clinton prevailed.
“She is the modern version of the Clinton politics and agenda, fit for a totally different era,” Jonathan Cowan, president of the moderate Democratic think tank Third Way, says.
Clinton’s ability to bridge the gap between generations is a testament to the party’s consistent focus on the middle class, her own differences with her husband on key issues and the knack of both Clintons to brand themselves for the eras in which they served.
It almost didn’t work this time, just as it didn’t in 2008. Clinton, lacking the natural political skills of her husband, did not reboot sufficiently for a 2016 primary campaign in which four in 10 Democrats described themselves as liberal, down from fewer than three in 10 at the turn of the century, according to the Pew Research Center. That left her vulnerable to Bernie Sanders’ insurgent campaign.
“Hillary Clinton has become a bit of a stale brand,” says Douglas Brinkley, a presidential historian at Rice University in Texas.
Instead, she ran on her résumé. It helped that she would become the first woman nominated for president by a major party — and that her age (68) was not a liability against Sanders (74) and her next opponent, Donald Trump, (70).
Luckily for her, the Democratic Party’s shift to the left has not been as dramatic as the GOP’s transformation from the party of Dole and George H.W. Bush. The times have changed, but the party remains center-left.
“Time moves on, and anyone’s who’s sophisticated, anyone who thinks about issues, anyone who’s intellectually curious — you evolve with the times,” says Chris Lehane, a political consultant who worked in the Clin- ton administration.
It’s been quite an evolution for the Democratic Party.
The 1996 party platform said “we must continue to expand trade, and not retreat from the world.” It lauded President Bill Clinton’s effort to change “our failed welfare system.”
That platform sounded much like Trump in pronouncing “the first responsibility of government is law and order.” It included a crackdown on illegal immigration, a massive prison-building program and an expansion of the death penalty.
Fast-forward 20 years: The platform approved Monday by Hillary Clinton’s party states that “global trade has failed to live up to its promise.” It commits to “reforming our criminal justice system and ending mass incarceration.” It vows to “abolish the death penalty” as a cruel and unusual punishment.
It also addresses issues that went almost completely ignored a generation ago. Voting rights, income inequality, Wall Street reform — all are far more important to the Democratic agenda now than they were then.
Those new issues have given Democrats and Clinton new opportunities to seize.
Hillary Clinton’s comfort level with the party’s 2016 agenda is not just a sign of her adaptability. What’s easy to forget is that she is not her husband; her policy views are in many cases more liberal.
“She is very much her own person, and she was her own person in the ’90s,” says Geoff Garin, a Democratic pollster who served as a key strategist for Clinton during her 2008 campaign. “America has changed in very fundamental ways, and I think Hillary Clinton has stayed abreast of her times.”