Manchester, New Hampshire: Senator Elizabeth Warren delivered a blistering rebuke of Donald Trump on Monday, warning him that “nasty women vote,” and implored a crowd to cast ballots for Hillary Clinton.
“I don’t know about you,” Clinton said as she flashed a thankful smile and seized the microphone from Warren at a rally in Manchester. “But I could listen to Elizabeth Warren go on all day.”
She might have to.
With polls and early voting data signalling that Clinton likely will prevail against Trump in two weeks, liberal Democrats are already looking past Election Day — and relying on Warren to become the thorn-in-chief in Clinton’s side, scrutinising her appointments and agenda.
Clinton has vowed that, if elected, she will work across the aisle with congressional Republicans, but relations with liberal Democrats, including Warren and Sherrod Brown of Ohio, and her primary rival Senator Bernie Sanders, could prove quite contentious.
Some Democrats are not waiting for November 8. With Clinton’s transition team considering applicants to fill as many as 15 Cabinet positions and about 200 subcabinet positions, the left has begun to exert pressure over her potential choices.
“Personnel is policy,” said Robert Reich, a secretary of labour during President Bill Clinton’s administration who supported Sanders during the nominating fight. Reich said he anticipated intense resistance to any appointees with ties to Wall Street. “As far I can tell, those discussions have already begun,” he said.
Asked Saturday whether she had thought about her Cabinet appointments, Clinton told reporters on-board her campaign plane: “No, I really haven’t. I’m a little superstitious about that.”
But that has not stopped liberals from voicing concerns. “We need a secretary of the Treasury who is prepared to take on the greed and recklessness of Wall Street, not someone who comes from Wall Street,” Sanders wrote in an email Monday. “We need an attorney general who will enforce antitrust legislation,” he added, in light of AT&T’s proposed $85 billion (Dh312 billion) acquisition of Time Warner.
Democrats frequently point to Warren as a model for how to gain the public’s attention in effectively blocking appointments. Last year she foiled President Barack Obama’s appointment of Antonio Weiss, a senior investment banker at Lazard, to a top Treasury Department post, a coup that thrilled the left when Weiss withdrew his name from consideration. If she is elected, Clinton will face similar pressures filling Cabinet positions.
From the left, the most scrutinised of those choices would be the Treasury secretary. Front-runners for the post include Lael Brainard, a Federal Reserve governor who has emerged as a leading opponent of raising interest rates, a position popular with the left, and Sarah Bloom Raskin, a deputy Treasury secretary and former state banking regulator.
Before she became a senator, Warren, who has taken aim at the financial deregulation of the Bill Clinton era, criticised Hillary Clinton, then a New York senator, for shifting positions to support bankruptcy legislation that would have made it more difficult for families to receive debt relief.
But the two Democrats have since formed a warm alliance. Warren was vetted as a possible running mate to Clinton and has proved a potent surrogate, bringing her populist appeal and quirky straight talk to a campaign that has struggled to connect with young voters and liberals.
And few surrogates have been able to rattle Trump like Warren, who has called the Republican nominee a “thin-skinned bully who thinks humiliating women at 3am qualifies him to be president.”
On Monday, Warren took furious aim at Trump’s remarks on women and the sexual assault allegations against him.
“He thinks that because he has a mouthful of Tic Tacs that he can force himself on any woman within groping distance,” she said, alluding to Trump’s invocation of the breath freshener in a 2005 recording in which he boasted about forcing himself on women.
Warren has directed her singular brand of venom at the Obama administration, in which policy negotiations often include aides raising the caveat of “What would Elizabeth Warren say?”
“She’s a very powerful ally to have on your side, but it’s well known that she’s a very formidable opponent to have working against you,” said Adam Green, a founder of the Progressive Change Campaign Committee.
In the Senate, Warren recently took aim at John G. Stumpf, chief executive of Wells Fargo, when employees opened about 1.5 million bank accounts and applied for 565,000 credit cards that might not have been authorised by customers, regulators say.
“You should resign!” Warren said in a fiery exchange with Stumpf that quickly became a YouTube sensation. Stumpf has since resigned.
“Some of the best TV you can see is on C-Span, when Elizabeth is going after a bank executive or a regulator,” Clinton said Monday.
Though Clinton earned an enthusiastic reception Monday, Warren remained the more powerful draw for a number of more left-leaning voters. Some attendees had travelled from her home state to see her speak.
Haydee Bembenek, 75, of Massachusetts, said it was healthy that the pair would “keep each other in check” as partners in government should Clinton win.
Then Bembenek offered a prediction. “She’ll be good to run for the presidency,” she said of Warren, 67, “once Hillary is done with her eight years.”
Clinton won over many liberals when she adopted Sanders’ plan for free in-state college tuition for middle-class families and when she turned against the Trans-Pacific Partnership, Obama’s 12-nation trade pact. On Monday, Clinton said she looked forward to “working with” Warren “to rewrite the rules of our economy.”
