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ATLANTA Sen. Elizabeth Warren used a speech to a grass-roots conference Saturday to take direct aim at Democrats diminished moderate wing, ridiculing Clinton-era policies and jubilantly proclaiming that liberals had taken control of the party.

While not invoking former President Bill Clinton or Hillary Clinton by name, Warren sent an unambiguous message that she believes the Clinton effort to push Democrats toward the political center should be relegated to history.

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The Democratic Party isnt going back to the days of welfare reform and the crime bill, she said, highlighting measures Bill Clinton signed into law as president that are reviled by much of the left. It is not going to happen.

Yet Warren, D-Mass., who is widely thought to be considering running for president in 2020, noted to about 1,000 activists here for the yearly Netroots Nation meeting that they hardly needed to worry about the party shifting to the middle as it did in the 1990s. Liberals, she said, have taken charge.

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We are not the gate-crashers of todays Democratic Party, Warren said, invoking a term first used to describe the liberal blogosphere that emerged a decade ago. We are not a wing of todays Democratic Party. We are the heart and soul of todays Democratic Party.

Warrens five-day trip started in Poland, where she met with US and Polish officials and had dinner with a unit of Army reservists from Brockton.

Despite Warrens words, deep divisions remain in the Democratic Party in the aftermath of the 2016 presidential campaign. There is the familiar center-versus-liberal divide as well as an increasingly animated clash between economic-focused activists on the far left and liberals driven more by issues of race, gender and identity.

While Warren first rose to stardom on the left because of her populist jeremiads against concentrated economic power, she sought to use her remarks in Atlanta to broaden her indictment against what she calls a rigged system. Expanding her signature attacks on Wall Street and its political influence, she said women, African-Americans, undocumented immigrants and lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people were all suffering from fundamental inequities.

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Warren lampooned a recent New York Times opinion article, Back to the Center, Democrats, by Mark Penn, a onetime Clinton strategist, and Andrew Stein, a former New York City Council president. The path forward is to go back to locking up nonviolent drug offenders and ripping more holes in our economic safety net, she said of their argument.

Still, Warren implored the crowd not to push others out of the movement.

If were going to be the people who lead the Democratic Party back from the wilderness and lead our country out of this dark time, then we cant waste energy arguing about whose issue matters more or who in our alliance should be voted off the island, she said, drawing applause.

The annual Netroots gathering began in 2006 when it was called YearlyKos and sponsored by the Daily Kos blog. But it has grown in scale, mirroring the rise of liberals in the party.

The conference has also become a proving ground for would-be Democratic presidential candidates. Warren did little to dissuade a friendly crowd from thinking she, too, was eyeing a White House run.

Recalling the moment this year when Sen. Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, the majority leader, rebuked her for not following Senate rules and said, nevertheless she persisted Warren repeated the line that has become a rallying cry for her. When she vowed to the crowd in Atlanta that she would persist, chants of Warren 2020 rose up.

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Liberals are the 'heart and soul' of Democratic Party, Warren says - The Boston Globe