After some initial struggles, he had better luck. But what really ended Clinton’s supposedly unstoppable nomination push was Barack Obama’s insurgent campaign, which brought together the support of Wall Street and labor unions (among other strange bedfellows) and hauled in more cash than any campaign in American history. By the summer of 2008, Clinton was vanquished. Obama’s nomination seemed to herald a new era in Democratic politics, with the charismatic outsider from Chicago poised to purge Washington.

Six years later, the money and activist energy for such an insurgency is nowhere in sight – and neither is that new progressive era. And even erstwhile archenemy Hurowitz is on board with the former secretary of state, U.S. senator, and first lady. Now executive director of Catapult Campaigns, a D.C. consulting firm, he -- like many of the left-leaning Democrats who opposed her last time around -- now expects Clinton to be a more progressive president than Obama.

"The difference between Hillary and Obama in retrospect is she may compromise at times, but for her compromise is always a necessary evil, whereas for Obama compromise has often seemed like a goal in and of itself,” he told me, voicing a common sentiment among the politicians, operatives, labor officials, and progressive movement leaders with whom I spoke.

It’s telling that someone like Hurowitz is on the Clinton bandwagon. Her early strength seems to be the result of the party’s left wing having lost many of the key policy fights that animated Obama’s primary challenge. Yes, U.S. troops are out of Iraq and the Afghanistan war is winding down, but the modest scope of health-care and financial reform and the continued presence of Wall Street insiders at economic posts throughout the federal government stick out like a sore thumb. The Bill Clinton-Chuck Schumer strategy of teaming up with the financial sector and savaging Republicans has won the day, despite Obama lambasting transactional centrism to great rhetorical effect on the trail in ’07 and ’08. Occupy Wall Street inspired a leftward tack that gave Obama’s reelection campaign a shot in the arm, but as soon as he won, the president went right back to appointing Wall Street vets (some of whom were major campaign donors) early in the second term.

Conversely, Obama’s failure to lead a bold progressive movement has dulled the appetite for another anti-establishment, outsider campaign. Time and again, leaders say they still feel burned by the experience and will have a hard time getting “fired up” again. It doesn’t help matters that none of the men who might challenge Clinton -- including Vice President Joe Biden, Maryland Governor Martin O’Malley, and New York Governor Andrew Cuomo -- are in position to offer up much of a contrast with her ideologically. Perhaps the most interesting thing about any of them is that O’Malley inspired The Wire’s Tommy Carcetti.