Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) insisted in a recent interview with The New York Times that she does not plan to seek the presidency.
"In the interview, Warren, 64, said twice that she had no interest in running for president, a point her aides amplify privately," reported The Times. "But she said she would continue to focus on economic fairness, saying it is the signal issue of the day."
Still, if Hillary Clinton decides not to run in 2016, David Axelrod, a former adviser to President Barack Obama, said Warren may be more likely to reconsider.
“If Hillary doesn’t run, I bet there will be plenty of folks, particularly on the left, urging her to look at it,” Axelrod said, according to The Times. Axelrod called Warren an "electric figure" among progressives.
Daily Beast writer Peter Beinart also recently argued that Warren could pose a formidable challenge to Clinton in a primary campaign, if she wanted to do so. He said the former first lady and New York senator is "vulnerable to a candidate who can inspire passion and embody fundamental change, especially on the subject of economic inequality and corporate power, a subject with deep resonance among millennial Democrats." From his piece:
First, as a woman, Warren would drain the deepest reservoir of pro-Hillary passion: the prospect of a female president. While Hillary would raise vast sums, Dean and Obama have both shown that in the digital age, an insurgent can compete financially by inspiring huge numbers of small donations. Elizabeth Warren can do that. [...]
Warren has done it by challenging corporate power with an intensity Clinton Democrats rarely muster. At the convention, she attacked the “Wall Street CEOs -- the same ones who wrecked our economy and destroyed millions of jobs -- [who] still strut around Congress, no shame, demanding favors, and acting like we should thank them.”
And in one of the biggest applause lines of the entire convention, taken straight from Occupy, she thundered that “we don’t run this country for corporations, we run it for people.”
In recent weeks, Warren was part of the group of senators who torpedoed Larry Summers' chances of leading the Federal Reserve, opposing his closeness to Wall Street and prior support for deregulation.
According to The Times, conversations this month by women's groups, unions and online activists around a potential Summers nomination were "repeatedly overtaken by talk about drafting Ms. Warren to run for president."
Politicians, of course, often say they're not interested in running for office -- and then end up throwing their hat into the ring. Warren was also reluctant to run for Senate before she ended up doing so in 2012.
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