Hillary Clinton has drifted noticeably leftward on economics to fend off attacks from Senator Elizabeth Warren, who did not enter the race for the Democratic presidential nomination, and from Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont, who did. On Oct. 7 she even came out against the Trans-Pacific Partnership, a 12-nation free-trade deal that her former boss, President Barack Obama, has made a centerpiece of his second term in office. That took away a potential bludgeon from Sanders, who had battered her fence-straddling on a trade pact that he says is “designed to protect the interests of the largest multinational corporations.”
“You can see or sense a shift left relative to when she was Senator Clinton,” says Princeton University economist Alan Blinder, who is an outside economic adviser to the Clinton campaign. “It's not a huge shift but it's a shift.”