Warren, Biden sounding like candidates

Vice President Joe Biden looks at his watch as he speaks in Washington, Wednesday,July 16, 2014, during Generation Progress's annual Make Progress National Summit. As Hillary Rodham Clinton promotes her book, liberals in the Democratic Party are elbowing into the 2016 presidential conversation. Potential Clinton rivals like Biden, Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren and Maryland Gov. Martin O'Malley are in the middle of a summertime tour of Democratic constituencies and campaigns, drawing contrasts to Clinton as she weighs a heavily anticipated second presidential bid.
Vice President Joe Biden looks at his watch as he speaks in Washington, Wednesday,July 16, 2014, during Generation Progress's annual Make Progress National Summit. As Hillary Rodham Clinton promotes her book, liberals in the Democratic Party are elbowing into the 2016 presidential conversation. Potential Clinton rivals like Biden, Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren and Maryland Gov. Martin O'Malley are in the middle of a summertime tour of Democratic constituencies and campaigns, drawing contrasts to Clinton as she weighs a heavily anticipated second presidential bid.

WASHINGTON -- U.S. Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., told a group of young Democrats on Wednesday that the political system is "rigged" by powerful lobbyists and the wealthy, and made an impassioned case for reducing burdensome student loans. And Vice President Joe Biden said he had been on the front lines of debates over income inequality, climate change and gay marriage.

"I've been at the center of most progressive battles for a long, long time," Biden said, in a lengthy speech to Generation Progress. He heard shouts of "We love Joe," as he exited the stage.

Hillary Rodham Clinton remains the dominant figure in Democrats' early 2016 discussions, but she is beginning to see some competition from liberals in her party as she considers a second run for the presidency.

Potential 2016 rivals like Biden, Warren and Maryland Gov. Martin O'Malley are in the middle of a summertime tour of Democratic constituencies, frequently appealing to liberal activists who want a more populist approach to the economy and question the deporting of children flooding in from Central America.

"Ongoing current events give her potential opponents an opportunity to position themselves in contrast to her," Democratic strategist Tom McMahon said of Clinton.

Biden, who will address the liberal Netroots Nation conference in Detroit later this week along with Warren, noted his role as a leading advocate for President Barack Obama's agenda in a wide-ranging speech that touched upon issues such as domestic violence, voting rights and the problems of corrosive politics.

Biden said he's often referred to as "middle class Joe," telling the students that the economic bargain of years past has been broken and needs to be restored.

"Folks in the middle, they need to be cut into the deal, not cut out," Biden said. "The folks at the bottom need to know that they have the chance to climb the ladder."

Biden has maintained ties to the early voting states of Iowa, New Hampshire and South Carolina, and projects a blue-collar image in contrast to the former first lady's recent stumbles over discussions of her family's wealth.

Warren has become a hero of the party's economic populists, railing against high student loan debt at a time when Clinton has received six-figure speaking fees on college campuses. Clinton at times passes those fees along to her family's foundation.

In her speech, Warren detailed "how Washington is a rigged game" and said her bill to help students refinance their college loans at lower rates had been blocked by Senate Republicans.

"Our voices matter, and it's time to use them. Together that's how we make sure that our government works," Warren said.

Warren has turned into a go-to surrogate for Senate candidates, campaigning for Democrats in Oregon, Kentucky and West Virginia. She planned to raise money for Rep. Gary Peters, who is seeking Michigan's open Senate seat, during her trip to Detroit for Netroots Nation and was ending the week in Los Angeles at the National Council of La Raza, where immigration will be a leading topic.

Democrats note that Clinton still holds a sizable advantage in early primary polls and suggest that she could appeal to all wings of the party. "The view among a lot of progressive people is that there's a more practical view of her candidacy, there's enormous strength there," said Tad Devine, a veteran of Democratic presidential campaigns.

O'Malley has made trips to Iowa and New Hampshire in the past month and notably distanced himself from both Clinton and Obama on the crisis along the Mexican border.

"We are not a country that should turn children away and send them back to certain death," O'Malley said in Nashville during a weekend meeting of the National Governors Association. Late Tuesday, reports of a leaked phone call between the governor and a top Obama aide surfaced in which he purportedly asked the administration not to send the foreign children to his state.

Clinton cited the need to reunite the children with their families but said during a CNN forum in June that the U.S. needed to "send a clear message: Just because your child gets across the border doesn't mean your child gets to stay."

Information for this article was contributed by Verena Dobnik of The Associated Press.

A Section on 07/17/2014

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