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

Even Slick Willie at his best probably couldn’t talk his way to the nomination. Not only did he deregulate Wall Street, he also cut investment taxes for the rich, and signed the North American Free Trade Agreement. Income inequality soared. Imagine the negative ads Sanders would run against him using Clinton’s famous State of the Union quote: “The era of big government is over.” If the Democratic debates had “a kiddie table” like the GOP debates do, Bill Clinton might be stuck there like Rick Santorum and George Pataki.

All this puts Hillary Clinton in the weird position of saying she’s a student of “the Clinton school of economics” while also disavowing its main lessons. She has come out against the big Trans-Pacific Partnership trade deal, would sharply raise investment taxes, and has proposed a broad expansion of government power — from jacking up the minimum wage to novel new taxes on Wall Street to universal preschool.

But even all those lefty policies still leave Clinton a rather conservative Democrat today — at least when compared to Sanders, who seems to have the party’s heart although not its votes to take on the Republicans next November. Clinton doesn’t want to break up the big banks, evolve ObamaCare into a single-payer plan, or give free college to all. Nor does she muse like Sanders does about raising top tax rates to 90 percent, or the marvels of Denmark’s welfare state. Even if in her heart Clinton really did feel the Bern, she knows that’s not where most Americans are.