Video

I wish that we could elect a Democratic president who could wave a magic wand and say, ‘We shall do this, and we shall do that.’ That ain’t the real world we’re living in!”

As the polls tighten in Hillary Clinton’s primary fight against Senator Bernie Sanders, her language is starting to carry echoes from a similar point in 2008, when Senator Barack Obama started surging.

In Ames, Iowa, on Tuesday, Mrs. Clinton delivered a thinly veiled jab at Mr. Sanders, suggesting he was making big promises that the realities of divided government would make impossible to deliver on. “I wish that we could elect a Democratic president who could wave a magic wand and say, ‘We shall do this, and we shall do that.’ That ain’t the real world we’re living in!”

It was not the first appearance of the magic wand in Mrs. Clinton’s campaign-trail speech. In February 2008, she used it to to argue that Mr. Obama’s call for unity showed he was naive about the ways of Washington:

“The skies will open, the light will come down, celestial choirs will be singing and everyone will know we should do the right thing and the world will be perfect,” she said archly in Providence, R.I. “Maybe I’ve just lived a little long, but I have no illusions about how hard this is going to be. You are not going to wave a magic wand and have the special interests disappear!”