“She needs to demonstrate to the base that one way other another, she’s actually going to get something done,” said Jim Manley, a former adviser to Senate Democratic leader Harry Reid. “They feel—wrongly, in my opinion—that this president hasn’t done enough. So she’s not going to fall for that trap.”

It’s “unusual” for presidential candidates to tout executive actions, said Norm Ornstein, a political scholar at the American Enterprise Institute, because they typically assume disputes will be resolved through the legislative process. “This is making it clear that she understands the legislative process is pretty much broken,” he said.

Ornstein said there are some issues she may be able to move bipartisan legislation on in her first few months, such as an infrastructure package, changes to the tax code, or a fix to ailing Affordable Care Act exchanges.

“Other than that, she’s going to be doing just what Obama did, which is getting as much done as possible with executive power,” Ornstein said.