Hillary Clinton Versus the Nineties

The memory of the nineteen-nineties has suffused the Democratic Presidential primary from the outset. But until last Thursday, when Bill Clinton was confronted by protesters over his 1994 crime bill, the decade’s main political protagonist had not really been engaged. Clinton was speaking in Philadelphia in front of four hundred people, a crowd small enough both to signify his peripheral status and to invite disruption. The protesters, “who won’t let you answer,” Clinton said, trying to quiet them, “are the ones who are afraid of the truth.” Clinton insisted that the crime bill was essentially a progressive document (the assault-weapons ban, money for after-school programming and community policing) that adopted strict sentencing provisions out of political necessity. Joe Biden, who authored the bill, insisted that it would not get out of committee unless Republicans got stricter sentencing as part of the deal, the former President said. Clinton said that he had consulted with African-American leaders, who had told him, “Take this deal, because our kids are being shot in the street by gangs.”