Mrs. Clinton also broke from many liberals, including Mr. Sanders, in discussing the future of Social Security. The left wants to expand benefits for most or all recipients. Mrs. Clinton said Wednesday she wants to increase benefits to the poorest, most vulnerable recipients—but she stopped well short of endorsing an across-the-board benefit boost. She also didn’t rule out other benefit cuts.

She also laid out her views on the future of Social Security in more detail than she has in the past, and what she didn’t say was as important as what she did say. Mrs. Clinton spoke of increasing benefits for the poorest retirees, but said nothing about more benefits for others.

“I am concerned about those people on Social Security who are most vulnerable in terms of what their monthly pay out is—that is primarily divorced, widowed, single women who either never worked themselves or worked only a little bit so they have either just their own earnings to depend on, or they have a spouse who was also a low-wage worker,” she said. “The first and most important task, I think, is we make sure that we get the monthly payment for the poorest Social Security recipients up.”

The program faces a long-term funding gap, and for many years, there was a rough consensus that the solution would ultimately involve both tax increases and benefit reductions to bring the program into balance. But many on the left have united to oppose any cuts to benefits and to back across-the-board benefit increases, funding them with tax increases on upper-income workers.

Mrs. Clinton said she wouldn’t rule out raising the retirement age for people whose jobs allow them to work later in life, if that were possible, though she said she didn’t favor this.