Hillary Clinton’s Complicated Path to the Center

Opening among moderates is blocked by Bernie Sanders and ideologically liberal Democrats.

Let’s deploy a football metaphor to describe one of Hillary Clinton’s dilemmas: There is a great opening for her in the ideological center of the presidential playing field. But right now she is trapped in the backfield by Sen. Bernie Sanders and his supporters, and it’s unclear she can break free to seize the opening.

This may be one of the biggest prices Mrs. Clinton is paying for the continuing challenge posed by Mr. Sanders. By pushing her to the ideological left and making clear he will make her pay a price if she doesn’t keep pointed that direction, he is standing in the way of her moving toward what should be a natural constituency in the center, and one that Donald Trump may be making more available than usual.

In the normal order of affairs, a presidential candidate tacks to the left in Democratic primaries or to the right in Republican primaries to win over each party’s ideological activists and win the nomination. Then a nominee moves subtly back toward the center to broaden his or her appeal to the general-election crowd.

In some ways, Mr. Trump is having to do the opposite. He has sewn up the Republican nomination, but now finds that he has to reassure his party’s suspicious conservatives to pull them into line behind him.

That leaves an opening for Mrs. Clinton in the place where she ought to have strong support anyway: among moderates in the political center.

This is where she probably belongs, logically. She is heiress to the Bill Clinton center-left ideology and coalition. She wants an increase in the minimum wage but not a giant increase. She wants to raise taxes on the wealthy but not as much as liberals would like. She favors government activism but proposes ways to pay for it. She is more willing to intervene abroad than is President Barack Obama.

But it isn’t that easy. Not by a long shot.

Mrs. Clinton is trapped at the moment defending her left flank against continuing attacks from Mr. Sanders, and that figures to be the case right up until the Democratic convention at the end of July. So to the extent she moves to the center, she risks losing her already-tenuous hold on Sanders voters. She will need those liberal Sanders voters at least as badly—perhaps more badly—than she will need moderates in a general-election matchup against Mr. Trump.

Moreover, any shifts in position Mrs. Clinton makes as the campaign goes on will risk exacerbating her broader problem, which is that many voters don’t see her as honest and trustworthy. That is a potential trap.

Mr. Sanders actually does better among moderates in a hypothetical matchup against Mr. Trump than does Mrs. Clinton, a head-scratching finding if there ever was one.

Six in 10 of those moderates supporting Mrs. Clinton say they actually are opposing Mr. Trump more than supporting her. By a 53% to 32% margin, moderates say they have negative feelings toward Mrs. Clinton personally.

The upshot is that Mrs. Clinton faces competing and contradictory needs. She has to up her appeal among moderates, which should be a natural base of support. Yet she also may find herself in the same kind of position as does Mr. Trump, having to reassure her party’s ideological base to ensure its active support despite having won the nomination.

In sum, the opportunity here is very real for Mrs. Clinton. But so is the danger that she ends up in a kind of no-man’s-land ideologically, not fully pleasing either those on the left or those in the center.

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