Elizabeth Warren to challenge Hillary Clinton for White House?

WASHINGTON - Like Tea Party Republicans on the opposite end of the political spectrum, progressive US Democrats are riding a populist anti-establishment wave, hoping their champion Elizabeth Warren challenges Hillary Clinton for the White House.

First-term US Senator Warren, a provocative anti-Wall-Street crusader, led a revolt last week against must-pass federal spending legislation weighed down with what she and other Democrats described as giveaways to big banks and wealthy political donors.

They bucked President Barack Obama, who backed the bill. They frustrated Democratic leaders, although the measure ultimately passed.

And they insisted their cause was one Americans would be eager to join.

One year before the 2016 presidential race kicks into full swing, this is Warren's moment.

But the question remained whether the 65-year-old can, or will, translate grassroots support for her positions into a viable presidential run against a woman widely seen as the Democratic frontrunner.

"I'm not running for president," Warren insisted to NPR in a radio interview Monday.

Pressed on how she routinely uses the present tense when describing her lack of White House ambition, Warren repeated: "I am not running for president. You want me to put an exclamation point at the end?"

A handful of grassroots Democratic groups are already hoping to prod her into a change of heart.

MoveOn.org announced last week it was launching a pre-campaign Warren-for-president movement. It has 10 full-time employees, and $1 million to spend to recruit staff in New Hampshire and Iowa, the states that vote earliest in the primary contests to decide the parties' nominees.

Their first official meeting is Wednesday in a Des Moines, Iowa cafe.

These are late and modest beginnings compared to the massive infrastructure already in place around Clinton, who like Warren has yet to declare her intentions.

"We're going to be building out what could become the undergirding of an actual presidential campaign, should Elizabeth Warren choose to enter the race," MoveOn spokesman Nick Berning told AFP.

While the political positions of former secretary of state Clinton may come across as vague and centrist, Warren wears her calling on her sleeve: defending middle- and working-class families.

She has clashed with Obama and party establishment. And her revolt last week brought the government to the brink of shutdown.

"There are certainly Tea Party elements to that," a senior Republican Senate aide told AFP.

In 2010 Obama nominated her to be the first director of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau.

After her appointment was prevented in the Senate, she successfully ran for a seat in the very body that blocked her.

Liberal lean

Last week in a blistering floor speech, Warren accused Citigroup lobbyists of literally writing the provision passed in the spending bill that repealed regulations on certain derivatives trading blamed for part of the financial meltdown.

And she listed several Washington positions, including vice chair of the US Federal Reserve and Treasury secretary, as being Citigroup alumni.

"Citigroup has risen above the others," she warned. "Its grip over economic policymaking in the executive branch is unprecedented."

Her pugnacity can make her seem radically anti-business -- a Fox News anchor on Tuesday said Wall Street bankers viewed Warren as "the devil."

But her fiery attitude is gold for the far left, which sees Clinton as too chummy with Wall Street.

Some 300 former Obama campaign staffers and aides recently wrote an open letter urging Warren to run for president.

The political clock is ticking. Obama and Clinton officially launched their campaigns in January 2007 -- equivalent to next January for this cycle.

On the Republican side, prominent and popular Jeb Bush made waves Tuesday by announcing he was actively exploring a presidential bid.

Warren does not yet have the national recognition of a Bush or Clinton.

A Quinnipiac poll last month had just 13 percent of Democrats favoring Warren, compared to 57 percent for Clinton.

If the 2008 race is any guide, such figures can be overcome. In December 2006, Obama hovered at 17 percent compared with Hillary's 39 percent.

Warren supporters shrug off the aura of "inevitability" surrounding Clinton. Their objective is to push the agenda far left ahead of the primaries.

As for Warren's continued demurring about the presidency, her supporters are not discouraged. In January 2006, one senator unequivocally said he would not seek the White House: Barack Obama.