Is the stage being set for another historical political battle?
Just a few months into her first U.S. Senate term, Democrat Elizabeth Warren is generating increasing support among liberals as a White House contender — putting her on a potential collision course with presumed front-runner Hillary Clinton.
Warren’s tough stand against the Obama administration’s proposal to potentially cut Social Security benefits has become a lightning rod for progressive groups looking for a more liberal standard bearer in 2016.
“If Elizabeth Warren ran, millions of people would obviously support her candidacy enthusiastically,” said Adam Green, co-founder of the Progressive Change Campaign Committee, who helped draft Warren to run for U.S. Senate against GOP incumbent Scott Brown.
Green said Warren already has won huge support from progressives for her recent bold questioning of financial regulators who she said are protecting big banks over families. Her rapid opposition to Obama’s proposed cuts only added to her star power.
“If Hillary Clinton or others don’t firmly oppose these cuts, they open up a huge amount of political space for an insurgent to run and win,” Green said.
T. Neil Sroka, communications director for the progressive group Democracy for America, said the group would push for an alternative presidential candidate such as Warren in 2016 if the Democratic candidate supports benefit cuts of any kind.
If we do see Warren versus Clinton in 2016 it would be historic since this time it wouldn’t be one woman running against a bunch of men. It’d be two women running against a bunch of men and running against each other — a further sign that women running for the highest office is now the new normal, just as it has in many countries for many years.
Joe Gandelman is a former fulltime journalist who freelanced in India, Spain, Bangladesh and Cypress writing for publications such as the Christian Science Monitor and Newsweek. He also did radio reports from Madrid for NPR’s All Things Considered. He has worked on two U.S. newspapers and quit the news biz in 1990 to go into entertainment. He also has written for The Week and several online publications, did a column for Cagle Cartoons Syndicate and has appeared on CNN.