It has been only three weeks since Hillary Rodham Clinton declared her candidacy for the White House, but she already looks more confident than she did during the almost 17 months of her last campaign.

Sure, no serious rival has yet emerged to get under her skin the way Barack Obama did in 2008. But Mrs. Clinton and her team have also shown a determination not to be thrown off course: not by the blowback on her use of personal email while at the State Department, not by reports critical of the Clinton Foundation, and not by congressional investigations of the 2012 attacks in Benghazi, Libya.

Such flare-ups used to make Mrs. Clinton go cold and cautious. Now, she is projecting a scandals-be-damned attitude and barreling ahead with her agenda. In Las Vegas on Tuesday, she was unafraid to court controversy on an issue dear to her — families and children — by saying that she would go beyond President Obama’s executive action on immigration and try to protect tens of thousands of parents who are still facing deportation.

It was a vivid contrast to a low point in 2007, at a Democratic primary debate, when she avoided taking a clear stand on an issue that was similarly divisive among voters: driver’s licenses for illegal immigrants.