Elizabeth Warren Has Some Advice For Team Clinton

On Friday, Massachusetts' Democratic senator Elizabeth Warren paid a trip to the Clinton campaign's headquarters in Brooklyn, New York, and she had some thoughts for the assembled campaign staff. Namely, as detailed by Annie Karni of Politico, while the main takeaway was short and sweet, Elizabeth Warren gave some advice to Hillary Clinton's staff that progressive and Democratic voters all over the country should probably bear in mind this election season: "Don't screw this up."

She was talking, of course, about the looming general election against presumptive GOP nominee Donald J. Trump, and it's no surprise that she'd be holding the Clinton team accountable for making sure the Democratic ticket comes through this year. Warren has been perhaps her party's most aggressive and outspoken critic of Trump so far, and on top of that, her criticisms do seem to get just a little bit under his skin. In fact, she's been such a successful Clinton campaign surrogate that she's been the subject of sustained, intense vice presidential buzz.

Warren has been unapologetic and forceful throughout the 2016 campaign season about just how big a threat she considers Trump to be. Never short on inflammatory backlash, Trump largely has responded to her searing criticisms with some widely-criticized, racist taunts ― specifically, he's derided her by calling her "Pocahontas," an attack against Warren's family's claims of Native American heritage, and a wildly offensive denigration of Native American culture and history, to boot.

The visit to Clinton's headquarters came just one week following Warren's visit with the former secretary of state at her residence in Washington, D.C., yet another encounter that stirred up vice presidential rumors. It was also notable since Warren actually met with Clinton in her home, as opposed to when Clinton met with her primary challenger, Vermont senator Bernie Sanders, at D.C.'s Capitol Hilton hotel.

At this point, it's still too early to know for sure if the rumors are rooted in anything real, or if Warren is simply planning to be a headlining Clinton surrogate throughout the summer. She's maintained in the past that she's happy in the Senate, and she recently told MSNBC's Rachel Maddow that she hasn't been spoken to about the possibility of being vice president. But she did pointedly respond to former Pennsylvania Governor Ed Rendell's claim that she'd be unprepared to be president if she ever had to fill Clinton's shoes, saying "yes, I do" when Maddow asked if she felt prepared to serve. In other words, the idea is clearly at least somewhat on her mind, even if neither side is quite willing to admit it to any interest just yet.