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Bill Clinton

Party of Clinton looks different than in 1992

Heidi M. Przybyla
USA TODAY

PHILADELPHIA — As Bill Clinton prepares to take the stage here Tuesday night at the Democratic convention, he’ll be appealing to a party that’s drifted far from the more moderate, new Democratic movement that he led during the 1990s en route to two terms as president.

Bill  Clinton speaks at the Democratic National Convention in New York on July 16, 1992.

The question is whether the 42nd president in 2016 can resonate with a more progressive party, while still reaching the conservative Democrats who enthusiastically backed him and now say they won’t support his wife.

Clinton has spoken at every nominating convention since 1988, and a review of his remarks demonstrates just how different the party’s message is today.

Bill Clinton is, in many ways, the face of some of the most controversial policies now being debated within the party. They include the 1993 North American Free Trade Agreement as well as crime legislation he signed into law that many African Americans blame for skyrocketing youth incarceration rates.

“Is it easy to reconcile the preferences of people who joined the party and people who have left? No,” said Bill Galston, a former domestic policy adviser to Clinton.

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“I know what Bill Clinton would do left to his own devices, which is offer a detailed defense” of his policies, Galston said. “I know he won’t do that.”

The Clintons embrace during a party at the Merrimack Inn in Merrimack, N.H., in this Feb. 18, 1992, file photo.

That’s because of voters like Jill Dunham, a 56-year-old telecom worker from Michigan who voted for the former president. “I thought he was a great president,” she said, but “there are a few things I didn’t truly understand back then,” she added, citing the crime bill. “As I get more politically knowledgeable, I’m not thrilled with it.”

The Democratic Party of 2016 that Hillary Clinton now leads looks very different than the last time a Clinton was running for a first term in the White House.

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In his 1992 address in New York City’s Madison Square Garden, Clinton sounded populist notes similar to what is being espoused today, such as declaring access to health care a right. He also shared, for the first time for many, his personal story about growing up poor in Arkansas.

Yet his broader theme, in which he touted "a New Covenant based on responsibility,” included a number of more conservative social and economic ideals, such as pledges to end welfare “as we know it,” balance the budget and to expand school choice.

That more fiscally conservative approach stands in contrast to some of Hillary Clinton’s goals, such as a proposed debt-free college tuition plan for public university students.

It’s not hard to see why Donald Trump, the billionaire real estate mogul, may be appealing to some of Bill Clinton’s voters in old coal-mining towns across Appalachia and in the Rust Belt.

The Clintons greet supporters during a primary night event on June 7, 2016, in Brooklyn.

Much like Trump’s message 24 years later, Clinton framed his candidacy around the notion that government itself was fundamentally broken and cast himself as an agent of change, vowing to break the stranglehold of special interests.

“Our people are pleading for change, but government is in the way,” the then-Arkansas governor said in 1992. “It's been hijacked by privileged, private interests. It's forgotten who really pays the bills around here.”

Whereas Trump and Bill Clinton cast themselves as the agents of major change, Hillary Clinton’s vow is to build on the “progress” of the previous administration.

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As a former first lady, U.S. senator and secretary of State, she is now, for many, part of the establishment that her husband and Trump railed against.

To be sure, the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee has been aggressively reaching out to the same working-class voters that gravitated to her husband, including pledging to make the biggest investment in infrastructure jobs since Dwight Eisenhower.

And for at least some of them, Bill Clinton’s speech could be a reminder of better economic times. Hillary Clinton has already said she would put her husband in charge of revitalizing depressed industrial areas of the country.

“I thought he was a great president,” said Rick Mann, a member of the machinists union attending this year's Democratic convention. Mann said he thought highly of the 42nd president despite the trade agreements that he also now says have hurt his industry.

So far, the benefits of Bill Clinton’s involvement in the campaign have been mixed.

While he’s been fundraising and hitting the stump in places where he's been popular since the 1990s, he’s also created some unhelpful headlines, including his recent spontaneous meeting with Attorney General Loretta Lynch amid the FBI investigation of his wife’s private email server.

Rep. Chris Van Hollen, D-Md., who is running for a Senate seat, said Hillary Clinton has already promised a “course correction” on the policies of her husband that have become unpopular, including on criminal justice.

Much like in 2012, he will receive a “very positive and enthusiastic response,” Van Hollen said.

More convention coverage from USA TODAY:

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Clinton's history of hiring women includes mentoring, office crib

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