Democrats in Washington and New Hampshire — especially the ones supporting Hillary Clinton — want Elizabeth Warren to end the wait and endorse a candidate soon.

But most of them are too nervous to say it publicly for fear of getting on the wrong side of the liberal hero and fundraising juggernaut.


The Massachusetts senator’s political plans have been the subject of discussions behind closed doors among Democratic senators, but her colleagues — almost all of whom are backing the former secretary of state and none of whom are supporting the Vermonter — have almost universally decided to keep concerns about her holdout private. They worry that too much chatter about it will dissuade Warren from making a move, and just as important, no one wants to alienate the figurehead of the party’s energetic progressive wing.

“She’ll have to make her own mind about that,” said New Hampshire Sen. Jeanne Shaheen, a Clinton supporter. “I haven’t talked to Elizabeth about this.”

So the partywide consensus about the potential power of Warren’s endorsement in her next-door state — other than those of Barack Obama and Joe Biden, it’s viewed as the one remaining endorsement that could swing the neck-and-neck early-state primary — has led supporters of each candidate to tread carefully around efforts to pressure Warren on a decision.

Warren is not alone in staying neutral, but the number of holdouts is dwindling by the day as Senate liberals like Ohio’s Sherrod Brown join centrists like North Dakota’s Heidi Heitkamp in backing Clinton. Warren — whose office declined to comment for this story — is the only Democratic woman senator who has yet to endorse Clinton; the others have raised money for her and some have campaigned on her behalf in Iowa. Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid, the other high-profile holdout, has made it clear that he’s unofficially behind Clinton.

The intentional shroud of silence around the topic has extended to the two campaigns, both of which are eager to collect Warren’s backing — and to promote the senator’s occasional tweets in support of their policies. But they are equally careful not to cross her by turning the Massachusetts senator into a political chess piece. While Warren’s office has kept in touch with the many former Warren staffers on Clinton’s team, for example, no details have leaked out about such discussions in the nine months since the front-runner launched her campaign.

While the Sanders campaign, which features a handful of staffers who previously worked for the Draft Warren movement, would also love her support, there is no behind-the-scenes effort to woo her coming from the Burlington headquarters, said chief Sanders strategist Tad Devine. Instead, the underdog is relying entirely on his personal relationship with Warren to make the pitch.

But people close to Warren’s political advisers in Boston say an endorsement of Clinton is far more likely than one of Sanders at this point. Clinton allies have long pointed to a 2013 letter that Warren signed with other female Democratic senators urging the former secretary of state to get into the race.

Claire McCaskill, the Missouri senator who has emerged as a feisty Clinton surrogate this cycle, argued that the absence of a Warren endorsement of Sanders is itself a veiled diss of the self-described democratic socialist and his leadership skills.

“It’s probably more of an indictment of Bernie Sanders that she hasn’t endorsed him, than it is an indictment of Hillary Clinton,” she said. “Many [Democratic senators] have worked for Bernie for many, many years. And he has yet to have one of his colleagues say: ‘We think you’d be a better president.’”

But the fact remains that Warren’s circles have remained so insulated on the topic that her Capitol Hill colleagues are, in many cases, left guessing about her intentions. A wide array of predictions emerged from interviews with a half-dozen senators from the party’s liberal and centrist wings, many of whom believe a flagging Clinton could really use the endorsement.

“Let her decide herself. She will, eventually [endorse], sure,” said Florida’s Bill Nelson. But will Warren back Clinton? “Oh, yeah.”

Maybe, said centrist Joe Manchin of West Virginia, who soaked up some of Warren’s populism just by sitting next to her for months on the Senate Banking Committee. But perhaps, he suggested, Warren could wait until Sanders is formally eliminated.

“As tight, as close as this would be, it’s just my gut that she would be a pretty fair agent on this and try to play it as fair as possible and [back] the strongest survivor after the primary,” Manchin said.

An endorsement from the bank antagonist wouldn’t likely provide a major jolt to Clinton’s ground game in New Hampshire — which already features help from members of Warren’s political orbit who travel up from Massachusetts on the weekends — but the resultant news coverage would likely provide a dose of momentum, explained multiple Manchester, Boston, and Washington-based Democrats aligned with Clinton and Warren.

“Certainly, Sen. Warren would be a great endorsement, and she can only do more to add to the growing number of people from Massachusetts who are up here on the weekends already, knocking on doors and folding into this big Hillary get-out-the-vote machine,” explained Sean Downey, New Hampshire political director for Barack Obama’s 2012 reelection campaign and Northeast director of the Ready For Hillary PAC before Clinton launched.

But Democrats close to Clinton aren’t holding their breath for a formal nod between now and New Hampshire’s Feb. 9 primary, figuring that Warren has little to gain from backing the front-runner and a lot to lose in terms of credibility among her progressive backers who are now with Sanders. By waiting so long to take sides in the first place, said a handful of Sanders allies, she has already started to lose her luster with the state’s most ardent progressives.

“Until Bernie really took off, Elizabeth Warren was the only voice of progressives,” said liberal New Hampshire radio host and Clinton critic Arnie Arnesen, a former state representative who’s run unsuccessfully for the House and the governorship. “Bernie, in an interesting way, has cast a shadow over Elizabeth. Not that people don’t love her still, but she’s not essential.”

“People don’t talk about her at all,” added fellow radio host and former state senator Burt Cohen, now a Sanders supporter. “I had a bumper sticker on my car urging Liz Warren to run before Bernie got in. The people that care about Liz Warren are all on board with Bernie, and there’s no talk about her whatsoever.”