Elizabeth Warren Will Endorse Hillary Clinton

An exclusive from Reuters is reporting that the senior senator from Massachusetts, Elizabeth Warren, is set to endorse Hillary Clinton's bid to become the Democratic nominee for president. According to the report, Warren will endorse Clinton within the next two weeks, as the primary and convention process for their party winds up. Warren has stayed neutral in this election cycle thus far, mirroring the attitudes of senior party members like President Obama, Vice President Biden, and former Vice President Gore.

It isn't apparent how the progressive grassroots of the Democratic Party will react to this news. A large amount of Warren's political capital comes from the progressive wing of the party. Pledging to support Clinton's bid for the White House at this stage in the game is likely a strategy to start to peel grassroots supporters away from the Sanders camp in the name of party unity.

This is a pretty significant move on Warren's part, should this report pan out. Clinton and Warren have not always seen eye-to-eye when it comes to policy, and although they both are (formerly Republican) Democratic politicians with law degrees, they have found success in their fields through different routes. (For reference, Clinton received her juris doctor from Yale three summers before Warren got hers from Rutgers-Newark.) Clinton focused on corporate law and child's rights before becoming First Lady of Arkansas while Warren went into academia with a focus on bankruptcy law.

Warren is a vocal critic of Trump, so it is possible that this is a short-term strategic alliance based on the increasing urgency to stop a Trump administration at all costs. Wait till the official announcement from Warren — and the obligatory public acknowledgement by Clinton — to see what common issues are mentioned.

While the goal of an explicit Clinton-Warren alliance is ostensibly to cultivate a sense of party unity within the Democratic Party, there will inevitably be some Sanders supporters who would question the timing of this leak. Others are speculating that a Clinton-Warren ticket (and platform) would be the only way to bring enough Sanders supporters on board to keep the Electoral College math working out in the Democrats' favor for a third consecutive presidential election; a feat that has not occurred since Franklin D. Roosevelt won his third term in the election of 1940.

For Clinton's presidential aspirations, this is a big get.