McClatchy reports:

Many moderate Democratic leaders have reached a surprising conclusion about Elizabeth Warren: They’d actually feel comfortable if she won the party’s presidential nomination.

She might be an unabashed liberal, they say, but at least she’s a talented candidate — and she’s much more acceptable than democratic socialist Bernie Sanders.

“The thing about Warren is that she is staying within the lines of what is manageable,” said Matt Bennett, co-founder of the center-left group Third Way, who also praised Warren’s recent visit in South Carolina as “very impressive.” “She believes in capitalism, amazingly we have to say this, but that matters. What she’s offering is not a rejection of capitalism.”

“She is not tipping over the edge into what is absolutely unsustainable in a general election,” he added. “Our principle problem with Sanders is that he has.”

Bennett’s group hosted a gathering of center-left Democrats here this week focused on crafting a winning strategy to defeat President Donald Trump in 2020. Most of the speakers outlined a political approach that differed from Warren’s. They argued that the Democatic electorate is more moderate than activists on Twitter and reminded attendees of the party’s stark challenges in red areas.

But in interviews behind the scenes here, moderate Democratic leaders struck a slightly different tone. Even if they aren’t necessarily excited about Warren’s candidacy, they’re not hostile to it, either.

It’s a tone that’s especially noteworthy as Warren begins to climb in state and national polling, suggesting she might face less institutional resistance inside the Democratic Party if she does emerge as the primary’s frontrunner. It’s also reflective of how many Democrats continue to see a fundamental difference between Warren and the other leading progressive candidate in the race, Sanders, even though they share a similarly robust agenda aimed at upending the country’s economic order. [Continue reading…]