Liberal activists have spent immense energy in an attempt to encourage the Massachusetts senator Elizabeth Warren to run for president. They raised more than $1m dollars, hired field organizers in the crucial early states of Iowa and New Hampshire, organized 300,000 people to sign an online petition and built a grassroots movement. But still Warren has not shown the slightest inclination towards pursuing the Democratic nomination.

So what happens to all this energy and effort if the “Draft Warren” movement doesn’t get her to run? It may just turn into Draft Warren for vice-president.

With Hillary Clinton as the presumptive frontrunner and her most likely challenger, the former Maryland governor Martin O’Malley, trailing far behind, a Democratic primary without Warren is likely to be a dull affair. The dilemma for liberals is how then they can keep the pressure on Clinton, who is perceived by many on the left to be too hawkish and too close to Wall Street, without the former secretary of state having a credible challenger.

The easy answer is to push Warren as Clinton’s running mate. Progressives would have nearly a year to organize around this, from the point in the late autumn when it is too late for any new candidates to jump into the Democratic primary until the July 2016 convention in Philadelphia.

As one well-connected liberal activist in Iowa who has dealt with the Draft Warren activists said, it would be “silly for them not do so and they may have that play in mind”.

Some are pragmatic enough to contemplate a scenario where the Massachusetts senator doesn’t jump in. Neil Sroka, a spokesman for Democracy for America, one of the mainstays of the effort to get Warren in the race, says “it’s Yahtzee, if [Draft Warren] gets her in” – referencing the proclamation a player makes when achieving a winning score in the dice game Yahtzee. However, Sroka noted that if Warren doesn’t run, “progressives had made clear what they want in a nominee, if it’s Hillary Clinton” or someone else.

The question is how to keep up that pressure and a vice-presidential draft movement would be the most effective way of doing so. Matt Sinovic, executive director for Progress Iowa, said he hoped that “whatever energy the [Draft Warren] effort has been able to capture around the slimmest potential of her candidacy would stay engaged in state issues”. The motivations behind a draft presidential campaign have a lot more in common with a vice-presidential draft effort than issue advocacy around the minimum wage.

When asked about a potential shift to a vice-presidential draft, Nick Berning, a spokesman for MoveOn, “wouldn’t rule out any hypothetical” and told the Guardian: “We’ll cross that bridge when we get there.”

‘So crazy, it might actually work’

A vice-presidential draft effort, though, would not be without its hazards. If Clinton does become the nominee, there are real political concerns about a Clinton-Warren ticket. Both, for one, would be in their late 60s, with strong ties to the Ivy League.

But according to Hank Sheinkopf, a top national Democratic consultant, a Clinton-Warren ticket is “so crazy, it might actually work”. Sheinkopf noted that people thought the Clinton-Gore ticket in 1992 was “a little bit off” as well, but “two southerners from the same place worked pretty well”. Furthermore, Warren would bring a populist appeal to the ticket that Clinton does not possess. As Sroka notes, Warren’s positions on social security and student loans poll well across the political spectrum.



A vice-presidential draft would have benefits even if Warren didn’t end up on the ticket. Instead, it would serve as a way to pressure Clinton to have someone progressive, even if she didn’t choose Warren, and make it more difficult for her to offer the vice-presidential slot to a swing-state moderate, like the Virginia senator Mark Warner.

Some liberals still aren’t giving up hope that Warren will somehow decide to run. Erica Sagrans, the campaign manager of Ready for Warren, insists “we’re going to convince her to run” and even suggested in an MSNBC interview on Sunday that the group was willing to keep on pushing Warren to run until the 2016 convention. But such efforts have little serious backing.

Sagrans excitedly cited the support of Van Jones, a CNN pundit and former Obama White House apparatchik, who simply thinks a Warren run would be good for the Democratic party and doesn’t explicitly support her over Clinton. Jones does not exactly command a grassroots army, and prominent Democrats have not been running to embrace the prospect of a Warren candidacy.

There is still plenty of time for the Draft Warren effort to keep on pushing for her to run for the White House. Nick Berning of MoveOn, a veteran of Wes Clark’s 2004 presidential campaign, cited the former Nato supreme allied commander’s campaign as a model, noting that he waited until mid-September to run.

But eventually, if Warren doesn’t budge, her supporters will have to move on. At that point, if Clinton still looks inevitable, their best leverage against her will be simply to continue the Draft Warren campaign, just for the No 2 spot on the ticket.