Updated by Dara Lind on April 16, 2015, 10:50 a.m. ET @DLind dara@vox.com
The good news for progressives who still hold out hope that Elizabeth Warren will jump into the Democratic primary for 2016: she's just made Time magazine's annual list of the 100 most influential people. The bad news for those progressives: her blurb on the list is written by Hillary Clinton.
The blurb is a warm embrace of Warren's populism. Clinton calls the Massachusetts senator a "special kind of leader" who "never hesitates to hold powerful leaders' feet to the fire":
It was always going to take a special kind of leader to pick up Ted Kennedy’s mantle as senior Senator from Massachusetts—champion of working families and scourge of special interests. Elizabeth Warren never lets us forget that the work of taming Wall Street’s irresponsible risk taking and reforming our financial system is far from finished. And she never hesitates to hold powerful people’s feet to the fire: bankers, lobbyists, senior government officials and, yes, even presidential aspirants.Elizabeth Warren’s journey from janitor’s daughter to Harvard professor to public watchdog to U.S. Senator has been driven by an unflagging determination to level the playing field for hardworking American families like the one she grew up with in Oklahoma. She fights so hard for others to share in the American Dream because she lived it herself.
The endorsement makes it clear that Clinton is more interested in getting Warren's followers on board with her campaign than in alienating them. That's in line with other things she's already said on the campaign trail, like talking about the need for a constitutional amendment to get money out of politics. But (in an awkward bit of timing for Clinton, given the Warren blurb) an article in Politico yesterday made it clear that Clinton's Wall Street donors aren't terribly concerned that her rhetoric would translate to populist policy. "She’s not saying that a hedge fund manager shouldn’t be making what they’re making," one donor said about her anti-inequality stance. "Just that someone in another job shouldn’t be making 300 times less."
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