While it might be a bit premature, some liberals have already pitched a Hillary Clinton-Elizabeth Warren presidential ticket in 2016, but what about Treasury Secretary Warren, instead of vice president? Warren is open to it, at least facetiously.
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“Well, THAT’S a fun thought!” Warren replied when People magazine asked the Massachusetts senator if she’d be open to the job in a new interview.
Would she run for president herself? “I don’t think so,” the former Harvard professor said from her home in Cambridge, Massachusetts. But, she continued, “If there’s any lesson I’ve learned in the last five years, it’s don’t be so sure about what lies ahead. There are amazing doors that could open.”
That’s less of a Shermanesque denial than Warren has given in the past. Still, none of those openings lead to a presidential run. “Right now,” she continued, “I amfocused on figuring out what else I can do from this spot.”
Warren has captivated some in the Democratic base with a message of muscular progressivism that spares Republicans no punches. “We can go through the list over and over, but at the end of every line is this: Republicans believe this country should work for those who are rich, those who are powerful, those who can hire armies of lobbyists and lawyers,” she said in Colorado while campaigning for Sen. Mark Udall Friday.
The freshman senator has said repeatedly that she’s not running for president, despite a scrappy effort to draft her. “At this rate, however, she may have to [run],” liberal Washington Post columnist Eugene Robinson wrote in a column that was circulated in circles sympathetic to Warren.
Warren wouldn’t say much in the interview about Clinton, who is currently leading the field of potential Democratic candidates by over 50 percentage points. “We have talked. It’s not much more than that. Not much more,” is all the senator said.
Last month, Warren ducked questions in two separate interviews about whether she thought Clinton was too cozy with Wall Street. In an interview with Salon, however, she was openly critical of the Obama administration.
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While Warren’s support has been rising in recent polls, it remains fairly narrow – concentrated among better educated, whiter, and wealthier Democrats. But only a little over half of Iowa Democrats even known enough about Warren to form an opinion of her, giving the senator plenty of room to climb — should she want to, of course.
Alex Seitz-Wald