Elizabeth Warren has said again and again that she will not run against Hillary Clinton for president in 2016, but that hasn’t stalled the rumor mill much and, after all, Hillary has continued to say the same thing about herself.
Despite their hushing, Warren vs. Clinton is quickly becoming a comparison recalling Coke vs. Pepsi. The difference is this famous face-off has a lot more riding on it than personal preference — and for one of them it could mean the beginning of a historic legacy.
Despite Elizabeth’s pleas to the contrary, the “Ready for Warren” campaign has not shown any signs of holding up. A group in Connecticut is meeting actively to not only discuss their mutual love for the senator, but also to brainstorm on how to get her to run against Hillary in 2016 , reported local paper The Courant . Betsy Glassman, an environmental activist from Litchfield, firmly believes Warren is a better option than Clinton.
“I think we’ve had enough of entrenched politicians. The country was founded by farmers who would do their civic duty and go back to the farm… I don’t know if it’s that the political class is in power too long or that they tend to be of the 1 percent or supported by the 1 percent, but they get entrenched… I’m just tired of the Bushes and the Clintons. They’re so tied to the corporate interests.”
That’s not to say that Warren hasn’t incurred her fair share of ire over the last few months. Recently, the Massachusetts senator made comments justifying Israel’s attacks on Gaza hospitals , reported The Huffington Post .
“When Hamas puts its rocket launchers next to hospitals, next to schools, they’re using their civilian population to protect their military assets. And I believe Israel has a right, at that point, to defend itself.”
However, Clinton is famously a neo-conservative on the global political stage. Several pundits and bloggers said Hillary put a nail in her coffin for a 2016 win with comments she made in an article in The Atlantic about the conflict. A brave move considering that many still suggest that Clinton lost against Barack Obama in 2008 because she had voted for the war in Iraq.
“I think Israel did what it had to do to respond to the rockets. Israel has a right to defend itself. The steps Hamas has taken to embed rockets and command-and-control facilities and tunnel entrances in civilian areas, this makes a response by Israel difficult.”
Of course, the Palestinian-Israeli conflict is just a small sliver in the general scheme of what the two women would face if they did actually go head-to-head in a 2016 presidential race. Still, the fact that both Elizabeth and Hillary were willing to state such a controversial stance speaks volumes about how interesting a race between the two could be.
Presidential run or not, both women are drumming up press in the meantime. Elizabeth Warren has become a symbol for the fight against corruption both in Washington, D.C. and on Wall Street, while Hillary Clinton has undeniable name recognition power — even in Elizabeth’s home state . Both traits could come back to wound each candidate respectively — with Warren getting stiffed by big donors and Clinton seen as too much of a part of the establishment to appeal to young voters.
[Photo via Getty]