President Clinton defended his welfare reform legislation, which he views as a major policy achievement of his administration, against attacks from Sen. Bernie Sanders. | AP Photo Bill Clinton swipes back at Bernie Sanders on welfare reform

ROCK HILL, S.C. — Bill Clinton, in a rare reflection on his wife’s disastrous loss here in the 2008 primary, says Hillary Clinton is having “a much better time” in South Carolina in 2016 because the press isn’t fueling a racially divisive storyline.

The fired-up former president, campaigning Thursday in a diverse town just south of the border from Charlotte, North Carolina, also defended his wife against Bernie Sanders’ recent charge that the Clintons’ 1996 welfare reform efforts kept millions in poverty.


With his wife leading Sanders by more than 20 points in most recent polls, Clinton was in a cheerful mood — a stark contrast to his frame of mind eight years ago. Back then, during a bitter period when Clinton acted as his wife’s prime surrogate, then-senator Barack Obama’s staff cleverly played up what seemed like an offhand comment — Clinton had called Obama’s opposition to the Iraq War “the biggest fairy tale I've ever seen” — into a damaging gaffe that was interpreted as demeaning a black candidacy’s legitimacy.

When POLITICO asked Clinton whether he is having “a more positive feeling” in 2016, he said he is.

“Yeah,” he said, as he made his way down a rope line, signing autographs and taking selfies with a predominantly African-American audience.

“It does feel better because, contrary to a lot of the coverage in ’08 … most African-Americans liked them both,” he said of his wife and Obama. “That kind of got lost in translation. … I feel good; we both feel good. It feels good, like I’ve come home."

People close to the former president, who was active in the 1960s civil rights movement — and enjoyed broad support from black voters in southeast Arkansas during his gubernatorial campaigns — said he was deeply stung by claims, fomented by Obama’s supporters, that he was out of touch on racial issues in 2008.

David Plouffe, Obama’s 2008 campaign manager, said he had “absolutely” no regrets about the hard-edged campaigning in an interview taped Wednesday for POLITICO’s “Off Message” podcast to be published on Monday.

The mass exodus of black South Carolina voters from Hillary Clinton’s side came suddenly, after Obama’s stunning victory in the January 2008 Iowa caucuses when African-Americans around the country — who backed Clinton as a safe choice — realized the Illinois senator had a real chance of winning both the nomination and general election.

“He won Iowa,” Bill Clinton told POLITICO on Thursday — adding that black voters in South Carolina saw Obama “had a real chance to win, and he was too hard to walk away from.”

Clinton, clearly buoyed by the polls and his wife’s wider-than-expected win in last week’s Nevada caucuses, defended his wife against Sanders' claim, in a Columbia campaign stop Wednesday, that she played a critical role in whipping up votes for the '90s welfare reform law that he believes hurt poor African-Americans.

“What welfare reform did, in my view, was to go after some of the weakest and most vulnerable people in this country,” the Vermont senator said, referring to the measure that reduced cash assistance to the poor while increasing some funding for Medicaid and other anti-poverty initiatives. “During that period I spoke out against so-called welfare reform because I thought it was scapegoating people. … Secretary Clinton at that time had a very different opinion on welfare reform — strongly supported it and worked hard to round up votes for its passage.”

Clinton views the measure — which coincided with a temporary dip in the national poverty rate — as one of his major legislative achievements, even though he vetoed two Republican-drafted versions before signing off on a law he acknowledged as flawed because it lacked sufficient funding for child care and transportation subsidies for single mothers lacking the cash to get to work.

“Sure,” he said when asked whether Sanders' attacks were unfair. “But nothing’s unfair in politics, I guess.”

He went on to describe then first lady Hillary Clinton’s role on the bill, saying she pushed it in a more progressive direction — and prodded him to use his veto pen when he was eager to cut the best deal possible with a newly elected GOP-controlled House under Speaker Newt Gingrich.

“First of all, she was mostly involved in trying … to get the children’s health care bill passed,” Clinton said. “But I asked her to look at [the welfare reform bill], and she said, ‘You can’t sign this, you can’t block-grant food stamps or medical care, and I think there’s not nearly enough money for transportation and child care in it.'"

Still, both Clintons signed off on the measure — shortcomings and all — in part because they wanted to deny the GOP a potent wedge issue in Clinton’s 1996 reelection campaign, numerous former administration officials have admitted over the years.