Well, at the time I thought we were making a mistake, if you check your background very carefully, I thought that we were not putting enough money into child care or transportation or housing for welfare recipients. We eventually, in the second term, added more resources to support welfare recipients. The changes in welfare were consensus changes, not simply between the Democrats and the Republicans. But the Democrats themselves felt that the welfare system needed to be an opportunity to people to transition into work.

We tried to do everything we could to build a support system for low-income people that went to work. We need to do much more than that now. As the economy is transitioning, I believe we need to look at guaranteed income. But we also need to think about mobile benefits: health care, child care, vacation time, family leave. There are a lot of things that every employer is not going to build in. These ought to move with you.

This is certainly no longer Bill Clinton’s Democratic Party. And when you say something like “guaranteed income” people will inevitably say, “Well that sounds like socialism.”

It’s not socialism. It’s very far from socialism. Progressive Republicans and progressive Democrats are all talking about this kind of thing, and it’s not socialism.

But certainly there are elements of the Democratic Party right now that are embracing socialism. Is that a mistake?

The Democratic Party has always had a big tent, and has always had people to the left, people to the right and people to the center. Whether there are more or less in each of these camps depends on what year you’re talking about. The most important thing is to come together on the things that will improve the lives of Americans.