CINCINNATI — They are two of the biggest names in politics. They have crossed paths since the 1990s. But not long ago, when a reporter asked Elizabeth Warren to characterize her relationship with Hillary Clinton, there wasn't much to say.

"We have talked," she replied. "It's not much more than that. Not much more."

Later that year, in the fall of 2014, they attended their first political event together, a campaign stop in Boston for Massachusetts gubernatorial candidate Martha Coakley. At the time, Clinton was preparing a run for president. Warren, a rising avatar of the left, could've offered a gateway to skeptical progressive voters.

She didn't.

Each delivered a speech in support of Coakley: Clinton's lavished praise on Warren; Warren's hardly mentioned Clinton. By the end of the rally, there were no photo ops or handshakes for the crowd. Not once did they even share the stage.

Two years later, the 2016 election has forged a vastly different Clinton–Warren alliance.

Here on Monday, beneath the painted dome of the Cincinnati Museum Center at Union Terminal, they emerged for their first joint appearance, unveiling a powerful new partnership aimed at Donald Trump, with none of the old distance and unease.

The pair arrived together, Clinton leading the way onto a circular platform in the middle of the hall. Around the stage, 2,600 crowded into the historic atrium. Warren threw out both hands, palms to the ceiling, as if in awe of the scene around her.

Clinton motioned Warren toward the podium, then stood near the back of the stage and took a breath. "Woo!" she mouthed. Over the sound of the crowd, Warren leaned into the microphone with the same surprised look: "Whoa!" she said. Thank you!"

"I’m here today because I’m with her. Yes, her!"



Later, as Clinton spoke, Warren stood to the side and listened intently, reacting to each line along with the voters below. To a mention of infrastructure investment, Warren nodded fiercely and let out a “yes!” To a promise of student loan relief, she jumped up and down on her toes. To a dig at corporations, she pumped her fist in the air. And when the candidate led the crowd into one of her favorite lines — about playing the “woman’s card” — Warren chanted along on cue: “Deal me in!”

More than most of the campaign’s surrogates on the trail, Warren took the stage for Clinton with a distinct mission, taking a high-energy and unapologetic approach to the job of attack dog, with a speech that complemented Clinton’s, not simply introduced it.

This November, Warren told voters, would offer a fundamental choice.

"This election is about values,” she said, unleashing brutal lines that assailed Trump as a businessman out for himself and a candidate “driven by greed and hate.”

“That’s who Donald Trump is — the guy who wants it all for himself. And watch out, because he will crush you into the dirt to get what he wants. That’s who he is.”



This spring, Warren emerged on Twitter as a clear and cutting voice against Trump when leaders of her own party still haven’t figured out how to take him on. “I have to say,” Clinton said, speaking after Warren, “I just do love how she gets under Donald Trump’s thin skin.”

“She exposes him for what he is: temperamentally unfit and totally unqualified to be president of the United States,” Clinton said, summing up the tack that she and her campaign advisers have pursued in recent weeks, arguing that, at home and abroad, Trump is simply not equipped for or worthy of the job of commander-in-chief.

Really, though, Warren made a notably distinct case against Trump, wading into personal territory that Clinton herself has addressed far more delicately.

Warren’s speech was, in effect, an attack on Trump’s character.

“What kind of a man roots for people to lose their jobs? To lose their homes? To lose their life savings?” Warren asked, citing the businessman’s Trump University enterprise and comments he’s made about profiting from times of crisis, including last week’s vote in Britain to leave the European Union. “I’ll tell you what kind of a man — a small, insecure money-grubber who fights for no one but himself.”

“What kind of man?” Warren went on.

“A nasty man who will never become president of the United States.”

Even as Clinton has grown more aggressive with Trump, aides warn that she won’t get “down in the mud” with him. (When asked to respond to his personal attacks, including those on her marriage to former president Bill Clinton, she flatly declines.)

As Warren hit Trump and “who he is,” she also offered herself up as an effective character witness for Clinton, a candidate dogged most of all by the perception that she is untrustworthy. (Seizing on the weakness, Trump refers to his opponent as “Crooked Hillary” and has sought to portray Clinton and her husband as corrupt.)

"Just look at her history," Warren said. "She’s been on the receiving end of one right-wing attack after the other for 25 years. But she has never backed down. She doesn’t whine. She doesn’t run to Twitter to call her opponents fat pigs or dummies."

"No,” said Warren. "She just remembers who really needs someone on their side. And she gets up and keeps right on fighting for the people who need her most.”

And with that, Warren straightened from the lectern, turned to face Clinton, and started clapping. The crowd waited for the speech to resume. But Warren was still going, sending loud, hard claps into the microphone and around the hall.

“Thank you. Thank you,” Clinton mouthed first to Warren, then to the room around her as the audience picked it up, clapping too, then chanting. “Hill-a-ry! Hill-a-ry!” Warren joined in, pumping her fist in the air. “Whoo!” she shouted.

