There is an element in the Democratic Party that is more concerned with political ideology than in winning the 2016 election -- and keeping an extremist Republican from inhabiting the White House. And sadly, this element resides in the progressive wing of the party -- the wing that is strongest in supporting equality, justice, free speech, and true democracy.These people are trying to pressure Senator Elizabeth Warren (D-Massachusetts) into running for president against Hillary Clinton in 2016 (and one progressive organization, Move On, is wasting a million dollars in this effort -- money that could be put to better use electing House and Senate Democrats).
I am a proud progressive myself, and I love Elizabeth Warren. I think she is one of the finest politicians in this country. But I also believe the effort to "draft" Warren as a Democratic presidential candidate in 2016 is misguided and doomed to fail. Why? Two main reasons -- she supports Hillary Clinton, and she does not want to run for president in 2016.
Warren is not on the fence when it comes to who the Democratic candidate should be in 2016. She supports Hillary Clinton, and she has stated that publicly. In an April ABC News interview she said, "All of the women -- Democratic women I should say -- of the Senate urged Hillary Clinton to run, and I hope she does. Hillary is terrific."
And Warren has repeatedly emphasized the fact that she is not going to run for president in 2016 -- including at a Netroot Nations convention of progressives who were trying to get her to run. She made that clear again in a very recent interview with NPR. The interviewer asked her four times if she might possibly be a candidate in 2016, and she was unequivocal in her denial. Here is that part of the interview:
Sen. Warren, as you must know, that even as you were fighting over this in the Senate, there was a group called Ready for Warren that wants you to run for president, that released a letter signed by more than 300 people who describe themselves as former Obama campaign workers and staffers and aides. They want you to run. What do you say to them? I'm, I'm not running for president. That's not what we're doing. We had a really important fight in the United States Congress just this past week. And I'm putting all my energy into that fight and to what happens after this. Would you tell these independent groups, "Give it up!" You're just never going to run. I told them, "I'm not running for president." You're putting that in the present tense, though. Are you never going to run? I am not running for president. You're not putting a "never" on that. I am not running for president. You want me to put an exclamation point at the end? My progressive brothers and sisters need to stop this nonsensical "draft Warren" movement. She has made up her mind not to run -- and she is not a weak-minded person who can be pushed into doing what she doesn't want to do. She supports Clinton, and that's what we should all be doing. Anything else would just create an intra-party fight, which we simply cannot afford right now. That would only give the extremist Republicans a better chance in 2016.
