Bill Clinton would lose today’s Dem primary

Vice President Biden has asserted that conservative icon Ronald Reagan “could no more get the nomination of the Republican Party than I could get the nomination.”

It’s a cheap and self-serving claim, but it raises an interesting question: Less than 20 years since the conclusion of his presidency, could Bill Clinton receive the presidential nomination in today’s Democratic Party?

Clinton portrayed himself as a “new Democrat” — a politician who, though fairly liberal on many issues, was pragmatic enough to reach across the political aisle to get things done. Welfare reform, telecommunications and financial deregulation, NAFTA, the Defense of Marriage Act and balanced budgets were evidence that he wasn’t blowing smoke when he said “the era of big government is over.”

He also signed a crime bill that helped lead to plummeting crime rates, instituted the military’s “don’t ask don’t tell” policy on gays and, at least rhetorically, signaled that the goal of public policy should be to make abortion not just safe and legal but also rare. Clinton even embraced a conservative approach on illegal immigration, signing a law that raised deportations.

Perhaps the most telling example of how far left today’s Democratic Party has moved is his wife’s campaign.

Hillary Clinton is running against her husband’s legacy almost as much as she is running against her GOP opponents. She’s promising to raise taxes; she repudiates her husband’s tough ap- proach to crime prevention, and she is all in for gay marriage by judicial fiat. On immigration, she has followed Bernie Sanders’ lead in promising not to deport anyone without a criminal record. On free trade, she once supported NAFTA. She supported the Trans-Pacific Partnership, a deal between the U.S. and Asian nations, stating her support dozens of times as secretary of State. Now? She’s against it.

The Democratic front-runner is moving left not because the country has moved left (though it has on some cultural issues) but because her party has.

In 1992, Bill Clinton defeated several candidates who ran to his left — liberals such as Tom Harkin, Paul Tsongas and Jerry Brown. In 2016, Hillary Clinton has an avowed democratic socialist running to her left!

An American Enterprise Institute report found that the percentage of Democrats who self-identify as liberal has soared from 29% in 2000 to 45% in 2015. Among Republicans, the percentage who identified as conservative increased only from 62% to 68%.

AEI’s Michael Barone found large increases in the share of liberals voting in this year’s first three Democratic primary states compared with 2008, even as the number of Democrats voting decreased substantially.

So could Bill Clinton get the nomination in today’s Democratic Party?

The answer is a resounding no.