Back in 2005, when President Bush was barnstorming the country in favor of giving Americans access to private retirement accounts so as to mitigate the looming Social Security insolvency crisis, Democrats could hardly have been more derisive of the idea of allowing everyday citizens to harness the power of the stock market. During a debate in her senate reelection campaign in 2006, Senator Clinton typified the sentiment: “Social Security is one of the greatest inventions in American democracy, and I will do everything possible to protect and defend it,” Mrs. Clinton said. “The risky scheme to privatize would cost between $1 and $2 trillion. That would undermine the promise of Social Security.”

Now that she’s running for president, however, things have taken a surprising turn. Suddenly, the stock market isn’t too risky for average Americans. She’s proposing nothing less than letting all Americans have private retirement accounts. She’s spinning it as a 401k available to every American, but the basic idea is the same: workers’ money going into accounts that harness the power of the private markets to help them save money for retirement. Given, this isn’t giving workers back the money the government is taking in Social Security taxes as President Bush (and most of the Republican candidates for president) would do, but the accounts — even as add-ons to Social Security — are a huge victory in principle for the Bush view.

That isn’t Mrs. Clinton’s first foray in borrowing ideas from the center right. Take her recent proposal that every baby born in the United States be given a $5,000 “baby bond” at birth. “I like the idea of giving every baby born in America a $5,000 account that will grow over time,” Mrs. Clinton said to applause at a Congressional Black Caucus forum. “When that young person turns 18, if they have finished high school, they will be able to access it to go to college, or maybe they will be able to make that down payment on their first home.” While Mrs. Clinton’s campaign was quick to label this merely an “idea” and not a “proposal,” it comes straight out of the playbook of the former senator from Pennsylvania, Rick Santorum.

It wouldn’t be surprising to discover that Mrs. Clinton has read Mr. Santorum’sbook, “It Takes a Family” (his title does, after all, owe something to a volume the former first lady brought out in the 1990s). Mr. Santorum lays out a plan for KIDS, for Kids Investment and Development Savings, accounts, writing: “Under this plan, the federal government would endow each account with a one-time $500 contribution. Every child living in households earning below the national median income would be eligible for an additional contribution of up to $500. … The money must be invested in privately managed mutual funds set up under the act in a manner similar to a federal employee’s Thrift Savings Account.” Mrs. Clinton didn’t provide much detail about her idea, but it would have to be administered in a manner rather similar to Mr. Santorum’s plan.

With roughly 4 million babies born a year in America, that would, at $5,000 a head, be a $20 billion a year initial investment in a baby-bond program. To grow that money to a meaningful sum — say, between $15,000 and $20,000 by the time the youngster turns 18 — the government would need to harness the power of the private market, as in Mrs. Clinton’s 401k plan, by allowing parents to invest that money in the stock market (otherwise, it would have to be paid for either through higher taxes or higher government debt). So why does Mrs. Clinton support some investment of citizens’ money in the stock market and not others?

The difference, so far as we can detect, is that between a government handout and allowing individual ownership. Democrats are fond of the former and suspicious of the latter. A giant government giveaway that makes every child in America a ward of the state from birth? Good. Letting American workers keep control of their money as a way of abating the looming collapse of a New Deal legacy retirement system? Bad. This is really the ground on which the leading Democrat for the presidential nomination is fighting. The question is no longer whether it’s prudent to invest citizens’ money in the stock market; Republicans and Mrs. Clinton agree that it is.