First, they want Clinton to embrace an expansion of Social Security benefits. It’s an idea that seemed unthinkable during the period of fiscal austerity from which Congress has slowly been emerging, but it has gained steam among Democrats in recent months. Championed both by Warren and by the significantly more conservative Senator Joe Manchin of West Virginia, the proposal earned support from all but two Senate Democrats when it came up during last month’s budget vote-a-rama. “She says her focus is on economic security. There’s no question Social Security is a key part of economic security,” said Nancy Altman, co-director of an advocacy group dedicated to boosting the public-pension system. “So it’s hard to understand why she wouldn’t do it.”

Liberals are also pushing Clinton to back a national goal of debt-free college at public universities, either through huge increases in federal aid to states or in grants made directly to students. Both ideas seem unlikely, given that Republicans are likely to still control one or both chambers of Congress in 2017, when the next president takes office. Yet the test for Clinton, as some activists view it, is not so much the conventional question of whether she will tack left or right during the campaign, but whether she will shed the cautious approach to politics many of them have found so frustrating. “I don’t think the debate within the Clinton campaign or nationally will be about going left or going right. It will be more about going big versus going small,” said Adam Green, co-founder of the Progressive Change Campaign Committee. The group launched a “Ready for Boldness” campaign within hours of Clinton’s announcement on Sunday, and another coalition of progressive groups mounted a similar push to get the former New York senator to adopt a populist agenda on Wednesday.