The latest word is that Elizabeth Warren is not likely to be the Democratic nominee for Vice-President. “Warren is a favorite of liberal Democrats, though an all-female ticket is unlikely," the Times concluded on Sunday, in a report on Hillary Clinton's Vice-Presidential search that names eight less-famous possibilities before the former Harvard law professor. (It was, to be fair to Warren’s prospects, an article that leaned on the observations of a body-language expert.) On Monday, Politico reported that unnamed Wall Street Democratic donors did not believe that Clinton would pick Warren, and might withhold their contributions if she did. Speculation like this is called Kremlinology, but at this stage of a Presidential campaign nothing so solid as a Kremlin surrounds a candidate, just a network of conditional relationships that may soon evaporate. What we do know is that a Washington lawyer has begun the archaic process of “vetting” ten candidates—as if some secrets from their past might be more important to their reception than the pose they strike in public. We also know that, for many people, Clinton is not really making ten important decisions but one: Warren or someone else.

The first idea that progressives had for this campaign, before the Bernie Sanders phenomenon took hold, was that Warren would be their candidate against Clinton. A movement to draft Warren was launched in the hope that she could carry the broader argument against concentrated wealth and economic inequality forward in the Presidential race, and that she could appeal to radicalized communities of color. But Warren chose not to run, and this month she has emerged as the Democrats’ sharpest partisan. On May 24th, Clinton’s campaign released an ad that showed Donald Trump’s response when he was asked, in 2006, about the possibility of a financial crash. “I sort of hope that happens,” Trump said, explaining that he could make a lot of money. That evening, Warren delivered a devastating speech that took that quote as a theme. She told stories of families that had lost their homes. “What kind of a man does that?” she said. “Root for people to get thrown out on the street? Root for two little girls in Clark County, Nevada, to end up living in a van?” Two days later, she gave an equally forceful response, in front of a group of progressive lawyers, to Trump’s attack on the Mexican-American judge Gonzalo Curiel.

On June 8th, the day after Clinton won the California primary, Rachel Maddow flew to Washington to devote an entire episode of her program to an interview in which Warren endorsed Clinton. By this time, the senior senator from Massachusetts had become the Democrats’ most effective surrogate. For several years, Warren had been dismissed as an egghead wandering the periphery of the Washington schoolyard; suddenly she was the cold-eyed kid to whom you handed the shiv. Maddow is beloved by her audience for her efforts to subvert the conventions of television news, but she is equally savvy at deploying them—at asking, for instance, the obvious question. Maddow mentioned that Ed Rendell, the former Pennsylvania governor, had said that Warren was not qualified to be Commander-in-Chief. The host said she understood that Warren had not sought questions like this, and then asked whether the senator believed that she was ready to serve as President. Warren paused for an unusually long time, long enough that the weight of the question could not be missed, and then said just, “Yes, I do.”

The choreography—down to that language, the words people use at weddings—made you at least a little suspicious of choreography elsewhere. Take that Politico story about Wall Street’s alarm at the possibility that Warren might be V.P.: in a season loud with economic populism, surely it won’t damage Warren’s image to remind the public that she is an enemy of plutocrats. If Clinton, whose ties to Wall Street are a notable weakness, has already decided to pick Warren, this wasn’t a bad way to begin suggesting that, in the most symbolically rich decision of her candidacy, she is prepared to side with the people against the powerful.

One reason that insiders tend to downplay Warren’s chances is that her nomination would temporarily throw her Senate seat to the G.O.P.; Charlie Baker, the Republican governor of Massachusetts, would appoint an interim successor, who would be replaced in a special election. But this worry has been overemphasized. For one thing, Harry Reid (the Party's real cold-eyed kid), who reportedly supports Warren’s nomination, has discovered a way to time her acceptance in such a way that Baker’s appointee would serve very briefly. For another, Baker (who is moderate, popular, and very vocal about how much he abhors Trump) is exactly the kind of Republican whom Clinton would want on the air during the Presidential campaign, both because of his antipathy toward his party’s nominee and because he serves as a reminder that there are Republicans with whom Clinton might negotiate. The common suggestion that voters aren’t prepared for two women on the ticket ignores the fact that it would reinforce the historic nature of Clinton’s candidacy.

Other cases against Clinton picking Warren are more compelling. Clinton is often said to prize loyalty. Even during her appearance with Maddow, Warren made only a narrow case on Clinton’s behalf. The senator kept calling the nominee a partisan “fighter” but did not vouch for her as a champion of working families or praise her commitment to progressive ideals. It isn’t hard to see how Clinton and her advisers might perceive Warren’s ideological commitments and prominence as a potential problem—a competing source of authority, a running symbol of unmet progressive promises. Clinton might find a better fit with a more traditional Democrat—Senator Michael Bennet, of Colorado, who brings a lower-key persona and a pragmatic emphasis on policy, may be the comer—or with a less prominent figure from the left. Maybe the Times’ body-language expert was onto something when she described watching Clinton campaigning with Sherrod Brown, the progressive senator from Ohio. “Her body is leaning into his, and she never leans into anybody. She adores that guy,” the expert said.

The case for Warren as the Vice-Presidential nominee has often rested on the perspective that she shares with Sanders, but at least as important are the differences. To Sanders, the site of essential American corruption is Washington, in which politics has worked for the classes of millionaires and billionaires and no one else. To Warren, the problem has always been Wall Street, and the social inequality that it leaves behind; Washington has been a place where those problems can be deepened or fixed. Her defining political achievement has been the creation of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, the new regulatory agency of which she was the chief theorist.

On Tuesday, Clinton is giving a speech about the dangers that Trump poses to the economy, one that is likely to draw heavily from Warren’s themes. One reason that Warren has been such an effective surrogate this month is the reminders she gives her audiences of the essential dehumanization of the financial crisis, of the vulture-like role that Trump and his class played in the lives of ordinary people. What is at stake in Clinton’s speech is how easily that idea might be folded into a conventional Democratic campaign. Clinton has struggled during this election to find some purchase on the urgent economic populism that has moved through the country; the language that Sanders and Trump have used is directly at odds with her convictions. Warren’s language channels the same energies in more familiar ways: as a condemnation of the partisans of wealth and advocacy of a strong regulatory state. No wonder Warren’s profile is rising now, as Clinton works to meet a more radical moment. Between the left and the center-left, Warren is the missing link.