(This caricature of Sen. Elizabeth Warren is by DonkeyHotey.)A fairly sizable portion of progressives want Senator Elizabeth Warren to run for president, and ignoring her repeated statements that she will not run (and in fact, supports Hillary Clinton for that job), they have started a movement to draft Warren. I do not agree with them, and have stated that on this blog several times. I think this for two reasons -- Warren is more valuable right where she is (in the United States Senate), and Hillary Clinton has a much better chance to be elected (and keep a right-wing GOP extremist out of the White House).
Jill Lawrence has written an excellent article for Politico in which she details why Warren will not run for president. It is an excellent article, and one I hope all my fellow progressives will read before continuing their quixotic quest. Here is some of what Lawrence had to say:
Today, the Massachusetts senator is deploying seemingly every political weapon at her disposal in defense of the middle class—and, in typical fashion, giving it everything she’s got. Aggressive, intense, single-minded—she is all of these, and that’s why she’s considered such a formidable advocate for families trying to survive on what she calls “the ragged edge.” But for all the same reasons, Warren would be miscast in the roles of presidential contender and president—and why would liberals want her to take that road, anyway? Warren’s attention would be diverted in a thousand different directions by a campaign. If she somehow managed to dethrone Hillary Clinton and win the White House, say good-bye to public dressings-down of Wall Street executives at Senate hearings and—most likely—to no-holds-barred attacks on “sleazy lobbyists,” “cowardly politicians” and banks that cheat families.
Being president, or even just running for president, would dilute what the left loves best about Warren and also, perhaps, what the nation needs most from her. Being speculated about as a candidate for president, on the other hand, sometimes can be useful. Back in 1991, Sen. Jay Rockefeller of West Virginia told me he did not discourage speculation about a run for president because he was thrilled by the attention it generated for his ideas on health policy. So it is with Warren. She remains vastly influential as long as she retains her unique role in the national conversation. But if she actually were to run, all that would change. And her record so far suggests she knows it. . .
The groups behind the draft-Warren movement are convinced that she would have more impact on the national debate as a candidate, and that she would keep up the same fight at the White House. “Nobody thinks she’ll be president and go Washington on them,” says Ilya Sheyman, executive director of MoveOn.org Political Action. Nor are the Warren forces daunted by Clinton’s dominance (she was at 60-plus percent in December polls of a theoretical Democratic primary field, while Warren drew 9 to 13 percent). Warren’s message is so powerful and resonant, Warren fans say, that she could go all the way. And they’re adamant that they can run a draft-Warren campaign without doing harm to Clinton. “The hunger for Elizabeth Warren comes out of sense that she has a vision and a track record that meets the moment, and not a reflection on any other candidates. Our campaign will be entirely positive and entirely focused on Elizabeth Warren,” Sheyman says. But all of those are arguable propositions. Whatever the moment, first of all, presidents rarely get to govern the way they intend. Bill Clinton did not campaign on pledges to raise taxes or balance the federal budget, but faced with deficits, that’s what he did. George W. Bush called education the civil rights issue of our time and looked to education as his legacy. Then 9/11 happened, and he became a highly controversial war president. Obama was the anti-war contender who would end U.S. military involvement in Iraq and Afghanistan. But the rise of the Islamic State and regional chaos have forced him to be, like Bush, a wartime commander in chief. There is no telling what a President Warren might face, and whether it would have anything to do with the problems she has devoted her life to studying and solving. Second, Warren’s message is powerful precisely because she doesn’t have to calibrate it or depart from it. She is free to stake out positions without worrying about the give-and-take and practicalities of governing. In pursuit of a “grand bargain” to get a handle on the soaring federal debt, for instance, Obama once proposed curbing the growth of Social Security cost of living adjustments; Warren, by contrast, wants to increase Social Security payments. He has nominated Antonio Weiss to be Treasury undersecretary for domestic finance; she has led a campaign to kill the nomination because he is a Wall Street veteran who helped Burger King escape U.S. tax obligations. Warren tried and failed to get House Democrats to defeat a massive “cromnibus” budget bill over a provision that, at the behest of Citigroup, loosened a 2010 restriction on big banks and (in her words) put taxpayers “right back on the hook” to bail them out. When it moved to the Senate, she went after Citigroup for “its grip over policymaking” in Congress and the executive branch in a floor speech that Democracy for America called “a model of historically transformative political rhetoric.” Obama, however, signed the bill because it had money to fight Ebola and the Islamic State, preserved his immigration and health policies, and funded the government until fall 2015. That’s even though he agreed with Warren on the merits. The purest messengers hold appeal to some in both parties, but support for them would come at a cost, no matter how positive the campaign. Even if Warren ran and was nothing but nice regarding Clinton, the race inevitably would be all about the contrast between her fiery, stand-your-ground populism and Clinton’s longstanding membership in the Democratic establishment—in particular her eight years representing Wall Street as a senator from New York. Also, the purist message is inconsistent with the qualities of recent presidential winners. Obama was the candidate who saw not red or blue states but “one America, red, white and blue.” Bush 43 similarly said he was a uniter, not a divider. While those have proven to be largely unattainable goals, polling shows voters overwhelmingly favor compromise over standoffs and absolutism. Perhaps the strongest rationale for a Warren run is to elevate her impact. But she is already having plenty. A team player, she has been a prodigious fundraiser and campaigner for conservative as well as liberal Democrats. She is a wellspring of policy and messaging ideas for her party, such as her bill to let some people refinance their student debt. Harry Reid, the Senate minority leader, just added her to the Democratic leadership lineup. “She obviously has created a ton of clout for herself,” says one Democratic strategist, adding that the Reid move alone “speaks volumes about the power base she’s created.”. . . She is already in the best place possible to give it everything she has on the issues that keep her up at night. -------------------------------------------------------------NOTE -- The organization most involved in the "Run Warren Run" campaign is MoveOn.org, which claims a membership of 8 million people. I am sure that they have reached out several times to those people with a request to support the campaign (as they have several times to me). How successful have they been? After pumping a million dollars into the effort and trying for several weeks (in conjunction with Democracy for America), they have had 200,000 people sign on.
They are celebrating that as a victory -- but to me it smells like defeat. It looks like their membership is speaking loudly through their silence -- they respect Senator Warren's decision not to run (and to support a Clinton candidacy), and they want her to stay in the Senate and continue to fight for the rights of ordinary Americans.
MoveOn.org is a good organization, and I appreciate their efforts to bring progressives together to support a truly progressive agenda for this country. But the "Run Warren Run" movement is a mistake -- and it needs to stop.
