Michael Barone doesn't feel Hillary Clinton's campaign opener meshes well with the mood of 2015.
Bill Clinton was elected president in 1992 as a different kind of Democrat, more moderate on some issues than previous nominees, vastly interested in alternative public policies that he had advanced as head of the moderate Democratic Leadership Council.
His party was prepared to accept him because Democrats were uncomfortably aware that their candidates had lost five of the six previous elections and had won the other one only by a narrow margin. Political scientists proclaimed that Republicans had a lock on the White House. Liberal Democrats were willing to settle for half a loaf to break that lock -- which they did.
Democrats have won four of the last six presidential elections and won a popular-vote plurality in another. Liberals no longer feel they need to compromise to win.
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