It has been a year dominated by populist rage, embodied in Bernie Sanders’s calls for a political revolution and Donald J. Trump’s angry assertions that the United States, and its workers, are losing badly in the global economy.

In an economic policy speech on Wednesday, Hillary Clinton gave this message: I alone am the candidate who knows how to turn those underlying frustrations into actual policies that might make things better. She offered herself as someone who would not merely vent voters’ anger, but respond to that anger by pulling the levers of the federal bureaucracy and creating legislation that can be scored by the Congressional Budget Office and just maybe pass a Senate committee.

“It’s not easy to change Washington, or how corporations behave,” Mrs. Clinton, the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee, said before exuberant supporters in Raleigh, N.C., a day after a speech blasting Mr. Trump’s business record, ethics and often-erratic policy positions. “It takes more than stern words or a flashy slogan. It takes a plan, and it takes experience and the ability to work with both parties to get results.”

Unlike her primary opponent, Mr. Sanders, she did not promise to provide free college tuition or to break up major banks; she instead said she would make sure students could graduate without a debt hangover, and clamp down on banks in ways that would probably lead them to shrink.