Bill Clinton scolds Black Lives Matter protesters at a rally for Hillary, Philadelphia April 7.

Many of us can age gracefully — that is, no one is stalking us to  rub our noses in things we said and did in the 1990s (if only someone cared enough!).  But when old politicians rebrand for new campaigns, old positions can be heavy baggage for those poor old backs.

So Bernie has a problem with a vote on gun control but, since Bill was president and Hillary publicly promoted his policies, what she has, is not a bag but a shipping container  …  with Bill sitting on top of it. (In the trunk: financial deregulation, welfare “reform,” NAFTA, and … Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act of 1994 .)

Candidates  … and their spouses … better have some good handlers to prepare them for the heckling at rallies. Bill didn’t seem very prepared when his speech in Philadelphia April 7 was disrupted by Black Lives Matter activists; or he was in a time warp and thought he was back dissing Sister Souljah and Jesse Jackson (that was his “Southern strategy”).

Bill’s speech in Philadelphia was an impressive, no-teleprompter performance, that was “good politics” … in 1994. Not so good today. “The Republicans won’t let me” excuse is met with “You’ve impoverished our communities” and “You’ve sent our kids to prison and ruined their lives.”

How should he have responded? Hard to imagine a genuine apology. Instead, he justified what he did as president and accused the protesters of defending “the gang leaders who got kids hopped up on crack and sent them out into the street to murder other african american children.” (“You are defending the people who killed the lives you say matter. tell the truth.”)

Clinton to protesters: “When somebody won’t hush and listen to you, that ain’t democracy. They’re afraid of the truth. Don’t you be afraid of the truth, don’t you be afraid of the truth.”  This is what democracy looks like: Y’all hush and listen. 

Clinton’s response exposes the contradiction in Hillary’s politics, this mix of 2016 and 1990s: We have to oppose mass incarceration and police killings of unarmed blacks, but we can’t admit we are especially to blame, because of our attacks on the black poor in the welfare reform and crime bills. Smart politics says, stay as quiet as possible about your 1990s politics. But what can you do when the activists break the silence in your rallies? You can’t call in the cops to eject them, they are too loud to ignore … and your supporters need to hear you make convincing response. Hard not to lose your cool (as Hillary has also).

Hillary has made some impressive efforts to meet with activists and has won over mothers of slain black men. But she too can collapse under the weight of this 1990s baggage. (Maybe she brought Bill “to heel,” because he later said, “I almost want to apologize” for “drowning out” the protesters, because “We can’t be fighting our friends, we got enough trouble with the people that aren’t for us.”)

This has been an astonishing turn of events: The Black Lives Matter movement has brought the outrage of police violence against blacks, and the many forms of racism, back into the public sphere after decades of exclusion. It can hardly get more public than these disruptions at the rallies of presidential candidates, which are such perfect fodder for news media. The peace that black elites made with the Democratic Party following the civil rights movement has been disrupted. How will this change black politics, and will this lead to a lasting change in Democratic politics? Or will black voters continue to give a pass to the only party that will talk to them?

Note: Clinton pointed out that most of the prisoners are in state and local prisons, not federal. But it was not just the particular impact of this law — they promoted the culture of mass imprisonment and criminalization of inner-city youth. The tough-on-crime politics was not evidence-based; it was purely ideological. The evidence shows, for example, that mass incarceration did not lead to reductions in violent crime. “This report demonstrates that when other variables are controlled for, increasing incarceration had a minimal effect on reducing property crime in the 1990s and no effect on violent crime. In the 2000s, increased incarceration had no effect on violent crime and accounted for less than one-hundredth of the decade’s property crime drop.”—Brennan Center for Justice, “What Caused the Crime Decline?”