Well, this is awkward -- especially if Hillary becomes the nominee. I like Joe Biden, but I'm not all that enamored of the former Senator from MBNA's part in pushing the atrocity of the bankruptcy "reform" act -- yet he's invited:
Vice President Joe Biden will join Sen. Elizabeth Warren and other leading progressives in addressing a closed-door gathering of elite liberal donors — a roster of speakers that notably doesn’t include Hillary Clinton.
The annual winter meeting of the Democracy Alliance, a group of funders of liberal causes, isn’t a presidential cattle call. But speculation about the 2016 Democratic presidential race looms over the four-day gathering, which started Wednesday at Washington’s Mandarin Oriental hotel. Last year’s meeting was a lovefest for Warren, whose speech fired up the crowd. This year’s program, reviewed by POLITICO, includes sessions on numerous progressive causes — including fighting climate change, reducing the role of money in politics and more rigorously regulating Wall Street — on which Warren is seen as more liberal than Clinton.
Warren’s appearance Thursday is to take place during a session called “An Economy That Works for All — A Progressive Plan and the Path to Making It Happen,” billed as a discussion on a state of affairs “we can’t sustain,” in which “the Dow Jones rises, real wages decline, and unemployment remains chronic.” Biden is set to appear Friday night at a gala at the Newseum where donors and operatives will “toast the tremendous work of the progressive community and look ahead to the future we hope to build together,” according to an invitation obtained by POLITICO.
While Biden has sought to position himself as a populist who could run to Clinton’s left on economic issues, and has spoken to the Democracy Alliance in the past, he has much less support among its ranks than Warren, whose appearance last year had donors pleading with her to run for president.
A super PAC called Ready for Warren, which was formed to coax the senator into the 2016 race, will meet with donors on the sidelines of this year’s conference. Two former Democracy Alliance members — Deborah Sagner and Guy Saperstein — provided the PAC with early funding.
