It would be an even messier affair for Democrats in the U.S. But Mark Carney in Canada has shown it’s possible to move a party to the center and become a majority party in the process. From the NYT:

Even if it has been messy, Mr. Carney has now completed the remaking of the Liberal Party as his own. He has moved it rightward to the political center and turned it into a ‘big-tent’ that includes a motley crew of progressives, environmentalists, social conservatives, former bankers, like himself, and others.

“People are quite happy with this purple version of a Liberal Party,” said Shachi Kurl, president at the Angus Reid Institute, a nonpartisan political research group. “It’s pragmatism, a business-minded ‘let’s get on with it.”

Our primary system in the U.S. makes this unlikely here. But it’s nice to dream.

Update – 4.16.26 – At the Globe, John Halpin and Ruy Teixeira say they’ve tried to push the Democratic Party to the center — and failed. … The two cofounded the now defunct Liberal Patriot.

Update II — 4.16.26 — Contrarian Boston’s Scott Van Voorhis reports that Seth Moulton is trying to stitch together his own motley crew of supporters leading up to the state Democratic Party convention. Establishment Dems, i.e. Markey backers, are apparently freaking out.