Bill Clinton seeks one more New Hampshire comeback

Bernie Sanders’ best attack lines against Hillary Clinton focus on “unfair” trade deals like NAFTA, the end of Glass-Steagall Act anti-trust laws and the Defense of Marriage Act that opposed gay marriage.

What he doesn’t say: It’s her husband who owns these policies.

In the closing days before New Hampshire’s first-in-the-nation primary, Bill Clinton’s legacy is being litigated by a party that’s moved leftward since the days of the 42nd president’s “New Democrat” movement that sought to shift to the center and cut deals with Republicans.

It’s been 24 years since Bill Clinton became the “comeback kid” in New Hampshire after finishing second behind Paul Tsongas, a senator from neighboring Massachusetts.

With his wife facing a similar challenge from a hugely popular senator from a neighboring state — Sen. Sanders represents Vermont — it’s possible the person best suited to help her is the man Sanders seems to be, subtly and without naming, campaigning against.

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As Hillary Clinton left New Hampshire on Sunday to highlight the water crisis in Flint, Mich., Bill Clinton barnstormed through the state’s critical voting pockets.

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“This is my closing case. It really is so much like 1992 on steroids,” said Bill Clinton, who spoke Sunday, dressed in a red and black checked flannel shirt, at Keene Middle School in the state’s western region. In a second stop, in Milford, Clinton took direct aim at some of Sanders' policy proposals, including questioning how he'd pay for them.

Sanders’ home court advantage has helped him maintain a double-digit lead in the polls. And expectations here for him are high — New Hampshire is considered a must-win for the democratic socialist who faces a much harder slog once the competition moves to a Southern belt of states with large minority populations.

“I do often refer to Bill Clinton as the closer-in-chief,” said Jim Demers, who was Barack Obama’s 2008 New Hampshire co-chair and now backs Hillary Clinton.

“He’s had a long and lasting connection,” in places like Keene, said Demers. “That probably where he’s most effective.”

Hillary Clinton made a momentous comeback in the final hours of the 2008 primary to beat Obama, then a senator from Illinois, here. Yet, even in the past several years, the state’s been flooded with new residents whose voting habits are unknown, and there are many young voters who have no personal connection to the Clintons.

Yet there is one critical demographic her husband may be able to help her with: white working-class men.

In his speech, Clinton called Keene a “special place” where “I first realized I might get nominated” at a time when the state had the nation’s worst economy, including bank failures and mortgage foreclosures.

In an audience filled with older white men, Clinton gave a nod to veterans and shared an anecdote from his 1992 campaign about a young woman whose father lost his job. “He can’t look at me over the dinner table,” the woman told Clinton.

The Clinton campaign is hoping some of the nostalgia over the thriving economy that followed those years can help mitigate some of Sanders’ Vermont advantage.

“When Bill was in things were great. When Bush was in we were going down, he wasn’t worried about the working guy,” said Tom Falter, a 63-year-old construction worker from Greenville who sat among Clinton donors at a major party gathering in Manchester on Friday night.

“I hope we’re getting a two-fer. We have more experience with him than her,” said Falter.

Sanders is running against Bill Clinton in some ways as much as he's running against Hillary. That's disappointing, said Gene Sperling, a budget adviser during the Clinton and Obama administrations.

"It is unfortunate that he is putting the focus more on policies she was not involved in and didn't cause the crisis, rather than drawing the fundamental contrast between Democrats like Sanders and Clinton and the Republican administration whose hands-off approach until 2008 did so much to allow the financial crisis to happen," Sperling said.

While the economy boomed during the final four years of the Clinton administration, many New Hampshire voters may not remember it.

“The problem Clinton faces,” said Andy Smith, director of the University of New Hampshire Survey Center, is “it’s a different state than when Bill Clinton won here and even than when Hillary Clinton won here.”

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According to a recent study he co-authored, New Hampshire’s population is among the most mobile in the nation, with more than 30% of potential voters this year either new transplants or too young to vote in 2008. “They will remember him but the people who will remember his campaign here will be very old,” said Smith.

In addition to visiting pockets of the state with large numbers of older Democratic voters with fond memories of the former president, Clinton is doing his part to set a narrative that could be critical as polls show Hillary Clinton unlikely to repeat her 2008 victory.

It sounds a lot like the one he used, successfully, in his 1992 campaign in which he parlayed a second-place finish as a victory given Tsongas’ home-turf advantage.

"Win here? Sure! But it's gonna be hard," he told NBC at his first campaign event last month in Nashua. "No candidate who borders New Hampshire has ever lost a primary here, except when Howard Dean lost to John Kerry because they both did." Dean was a former Vermont governor in 2004, while Kerry was a senator from Massachusetts.

While there have actually been other exceptions, no candidate from a neighboring state has ever placed below second in the primary.

Sanders also seems to view Bill Clinton as a counterweight to his popularity. “She won the Democratic primary back in 2008” and “her husband campaigned successfully in a number of campaigns here,” Sanders told a rally in Rindge on Saturday.  But “if we can bring out a decent vote on Tuesday I’m confident we’re going to win.”

The final advantage Bill Clinton brings is a broad bench of official supporters, including state representatives and senators, with lifelong connections in the state.

By mid-morning Friday, Bill Shaheen, a former co-chair of Hillary Clinton’s 2008 campaign, had made at least 25 calls to friends and neighbors. “It’s the old network,” he said.