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Van Jones / Progressive Policies

ELECTION 2016 ... 'The Clinton Days Are Over': Van Jones Says Good Riddance to the Centrist Democratic Party ... Jones noted that the Democratic Party’s base has gotten significantly more progressive since Bill Clinton was president in the 1990s.

Burgess COMMENTARY

Peter Burgess

ELECTION 2016 ... 'The Clinton Days Are Over': Van Jones Says Good Riddance to the Centrist Democratic Party ... Jones noted that the Democratic Party’s base has gotten significantly more progressive since Bill Clinton was president in the 1990s.

With Hillary Clinton’s defeat in the 2016 election, progressive activist Van Jones says that it’s time to move on not just from the Clinton family, but the kind of politics they represent.

Appearing on CNN Sunday, Jones noted that the Democratic Party’s base has gotten significantly more progressive since Bill Clinton was president in the 1990s.

In fact, he said that several of Clinton’s policy decisions — from his championing of NAFTA to his support from the 1994 crime bill that introduced the “three strikes” policy — came back to haunt Hillary Clinton during her presidential campaign.

“You have to understand, I think that the Clinton days are over,” Jones said. “This idea that we’re going to be this moderate party that’s going to move in this direction, that’s going to throw blacks under the bus for criminal justice reform, and for prison expansion, that’s going to throw workers under the bus for NAFTA, those days are over.”

Jones also knocked Hillary Clinton for making a “safe” pick with Virginia Sen. Tim Kaine as her vice president, when she really should have tried bringing someone on from the more progressive wing of the party to generate excitement among Democratic voters.

“One thing that happened, when Hillary Clinton had a chance to make a VP pick, she didn’t pick someone from the progressive wing, which made it much harder to heal those wounds with the [Bernie] Sanders and Elizabeth Warren wing,” he said.

Watch video of Jones’s appearance on CNN below.

Van Jones: 'The Clinton days are over' #CNNSOTU https://t.co/dU7WPjvuwe https://t.co/9kATwzRNmP — CNN (@CNN) January 1, 2017

Brad Reed is a writer living in Boston. His work has previously appeared in the American Prospect Online, and he blogs frequently at Sadly, No!.