Ramesh Ponnuru of National Review Online describes the Democratic Party’s march toward the left.
Both victory and defeat have been radicalizing experiences for the Democratic party during this century. Democrats moved left after losing to George W. Bush; they moved farther left after winning with Barack Obama; and now they seem to be moving farther left still under President Donald Trump.
The cumulative effect of all this movement has been to put the party well to the left of where it was during Bill Clinton’s administration. Hillary Clinton’s 2016 campaign felt it necessary to disavow many of her husband’s old stances, and some of her own. President Clinton signed a tough-on-crime bill; Hillary Clinton said it had gone too far. Bill Clinton appointed a commission that recommended a reduction in legal immigration, and briefly endorsed that recommendation. Hillary Clinton campaigned against “large-scale raids and roundups” of illegal immigrants and vowed to bring back some of those who had been deported.
Bill Clinton supported free trade, fighting to get the North American Free Trade Agreement approved. Hillary Clinton repudiated the big trade agreement up for discussion in 2016, the Trans-Pacific Partnership. Leading Democrats, including Bill Clinton, seemed open to paring back the growth of entitlement programs in the 1990s. Last year, Hillary Clinton campaigned on an across-the-board increase of Social Security benefits.
The Democratic party’s liberalism became more pronounced on social issues, too.
