CNBC's Jim Cramer said Thursday that if Sen. Bernie Sanders were to exit the 2020 presidential race, Sen. Elizabeth Warren would be free to loosen up her hard-line stance against Wall Street.
"I was hoping that ... if Bernie Sanders does drop out she doesn't have to be worried about that [far-left] flank anymore," Cramer said on "Squawk on the Street."
On Thursday afternoon, a day after Sanders' health scare, a campaign spokeswoman told CNBC that the senator will be participating in the next Democratic presidential debate on Oct. 15 in Ohio.
Cramer was suggesting that without Sanders pulling her to the left, Warren might be able to pivot move toward the center in her campaign for the Democratic presidential nomination.
Generally, candidates, if they're going to move toward the center, wait until they lock down their party's nomination and do it in the general election campaign, in attempt to appeal to voters beyond their hardcore supporters.
"There are people out there who believe that Elizabeth Warren is, quite frankly, a redistributionist. I think she is," Cramer said. But he contended, "I think she can be tempered."
Last month, Cramer first reported that he's hearing the financial community saying about Warren that "she's got to be stopped."
"I have tried to talk executives off the ledge because I think Sen. Warren, in my belief, can be less of a 'fear factor,'" the "Mad Money" host said Thursday, especially if she doesn't have to compete for the voters who are attracted to Sanders.
On Tuesday, Cramer said, "I'm not as fearful of Elizabeth Warren as Wall Street is." He believes those fears are "getting overblown."
Warren, a progressive champion for her bank-bashing and wealth-taxing proposals, faces stiff competition from Sanders, a self-described democratic socialist, for the heart and soul of the left wing of the Democratic Party.
Both Warren and Sanders, who as of Monday were polling second and third behind centrist front-runner Joe Biden, according to RealClearPolitics, rank as the top choices among primary voters who identify themselves as liberal.
Cramer on Wednesday, before it was known that Sanders had a procedure for an artery blockage, said Wall Street should be much more afraid of the Vermont senator in the White House than Warren of Massachusetts.
Sanders is "basically doing a socialist agenda," added Cramer.
The Warren campaign was not immediately available to respond to CNBC's request for comment on Cramer's remarks.