Liberals are also pushing Clinton to back a national goal of debt-free college at public universities, either through huge increases in federal aid to states or in grants made directly to students. Both ideas seem unlikely, given that Republicans are likely to still control one or both chambers of Congress in 2017, when the next president takes office. Yet the test for Clinton, as some activists view it, is not so much the conventional question of whether she will tack left or right during the campaign, but whether she will shed the cautious approach to politics many of them have found so frustrating. "I don’t think the debate within the Clinton campaign or nationally will be about going left or going right. It will be more about going big versus going small," said Adam Green, co-founder of the Progressive Change Campaign Committee, a group that has backed Warren but was not part of the organized movement to draft her into the presidential race. The PCCC launched a "Ready for Boldness" campaign within hours of Clinton's announcement on Sunday, and another coalition of progressive groups mounted a similar push to get the former New York senator to adopt a populist agenda on Wednesday.

Clinton likes to style herself as "the fighter"—first battling the "vast right-wing conspiracy" in the '90s and then presenting herself as the more combative alternative to Obama's message of hope and change late in the 2008 Democratic primary. Yet before launching her candidacy this year, she spoke in more conciliatory, almost Obama-like terms of creating "a nice, warm, purple space" and bridging the partisan divide. With Clinton apparently facing no serious primary challenge, which message will win out? Green, for one, told me that he's not worried about Clinton repeating what liberals view as Obama's key error: chasing Republican support that will never come. "I just don't think compromise will be her mantra," he said.

Clinton did offer a rhetorical nod to the Warren wing in her announcement video, echoing the Massachusetts Democrat as she said "the deck is still stacked in favor of those at the top." And during her first swing through Iowa as a candidate, she endorsed a constitutional amendment on campaign finance reform, another oft-cited, if difficult-to-achieve priority for liberals. Other items on the progressive wish list include support for proposals to break up big banks and to significantly increase taxes on the wealthy and on businesses.

There's plenty of time for Clinton to release a detailed set of policy plans, and without much Democratic competition so far, she may not be in any rush. Yet party activists aren't exactly known for their patience. The decision of New York Mayor Bill de Blasio—Clinton's one-time campaign manager—to go on Meet the Press and withhold his endorsement may have struck some as disloyal, but at least he had a reason. A candidate wouldn't earn his endorsement, he said, "until I see a vision of where they want to go." The mayor put a finer point on it the next day, when he referred to Clinton's long absence from domestic politics when she served in the State Department. "This is a different country we’re living in right now," de Blasio said, "and I think we need to hear a vision that relates to this time, not eight years ago–this time."