Clinton to bend, but not too far, to woo Sanders voters
She has an eye on moderates while courting liberals
Bernie Sanders may or may not try to persuade his passionate voters to love Hillary Clinton, but she’s not waiting to find out.
In the coming weeks, Clinton plans to emphasize portions of her agenda that align with Sanders’ chief priorities — especially campaign finance changes and college affordability — while highlighting and fleshing out proposals to boost middle-class jobs and wages in a bid to energize the entire Democratic Party, according to two campaign officials who were not authorized to speak publicly about her plans.
Conventional general election strategy dating to Richard Nixon dictates that candidates play to the far ends of their respective bases during the primaries — Democrats to liberals and Republicans to conservatives — until locking down the nomination, when they pivot to issues that appeal to a broader electorate.
“There are many reasons in her case not to pursue that course of action,” said Bill Galston, a former domestic policy adviser to Bill Clinton who coauthored a road map for his 1992 victory.
“Things she’s been pushed to the left on are not unpalatable to the center,” including trade, he said. The primary campaign has “done some damage to her standing with the American people, and I don’t think she’ll rebuild that by changing course,” said Galston. “She’d have a better chance to do that by holding her ground and fleshing it out, defending it, and arguing that it’s a reasonable and responsible place to be,” he said.
Polls show only a little more than a third of voters consider her “honest” and “trustworthy.”
However, Democrats are betting if Donald Trump is the Republican nominee, he’ll drive moderate suburban swing voters, and possibly some Republican women, into Clinton’s column. That means the risks that come with alienating the Democratic base may be greater than those of failing to court centrist voters.
“They may not need to move too far to the center because many of these suburban swing voters are so repelled by Trump,” said Larry Jacobs, a presidential politics scholar at the University of Minnesota.
The Clinton campaign also believes economic populism is now mainstream in both parties. It held back a middle-class tax cut plan during the primary, believing that rolling it out in the general election will energize both moderates and liberals. While her tax measures thus far have focused on specific tax credits, the campaign is now aiming to deliver a broader middle-class tax relief plan with a specific dollar amount, according to one aide.
Clinton telegraphed the approach in a speech a week ago after sweeping four of five Eastern primaries that all but mathematically extinguished Sanders’ hopes of clinching the nomination. She vowed to build on “a strong progressive tradition” dating to Franklin Roosevelt.
“That’s not the language that someone who’s preparing to create space in the general election would be using,” said Jacobs.
Sanders, a Vermont senator, still insists he can win the nomination through a contested convention, and polls indicate Tuesday’s Indiana primary could be close. Surveys show that as many as 40% of Sanders voters say they may not vote for Clinton in November.
By June 2008, after a tense campaign, a similar percentage of Clinton voters said they wouldn’t vote for Barack Obama, though many did in the end. Sanders voters, who’ve cast their campaign as a new political movement, may prove more inflexible.