Could Elizabeth Warren actually prevent Hillary Clinton from getting the Democratic Party’s nomination in 2016? I kind of doubt it, but in a piece I edited for the Washington Monthly, David Paul Kuhn makes the case.
It’s a really good piece even if you don’t ultimately agree with its premise. It looks at the strengths and weaknesses of both Elizabeth Warren and Hillary Clinton, the cultural and economic moment, lots and lots of polling numbers, the Draft Warren movement, and has some interesting quotes from Gary Hart, Joe Trippi, and Howard Dean.
In fact, Howard Dean makes a little bit of news in the piece.
I think a better question would be, “Could Elizabeth Warren actually win the Democratic Party’s nomination in 2016?”
But that’s just me…
Well?
What do you think?
I believe that she could win, but I won’t know until she begins running in earnest, raising serious money, and responding to her competitors once they start to bloody her up. We’ll see if she can stand the heat and fight the good fight, but I’m certainly rooting for her.
Maybe. Elizabeth Warren is an incredibly good fundraiser and would attract the Midwest / Chesapeake (which while not vital to our coalition is the death knell of the Republican coalition) areas in a way that pure social liberals or Blue Dogs wouldn’t.
But I don’t know how she does the extended campaign thing. She might turn out to be the next Fred Thompson whose whole is the less than the sum of her parts. She might actually be a gaffe-prone machine when she’s butting up her head against an opposition team that’s not as hapless as Brown. Hell, she and O’Malley (who is definitely running) might end up splitting the White Working Class Populist vote and be unable to stop Hillary Clinton’s coalition of Northeast + West Coast moderates from steamrolling them.
Finally, she just may plain not want to run nor hold the Presidency. Don’t count that factor out.
… “Could Elizabeth Warren actually win the Democratic Party’s nomination in 2016?”
Yes.
It depends on how many members of Congress, Senators, governors, and legislators her presence helps elect in 2014. And who runs away from her support. What the Democratic nominee in 2016 needs is huge coattails in order to deliver on their agenda. This is where the Obama campaign with it personal loyalty and focus even in 2012 failed miserably (some would claim intentionally) and brought about the current crisis.
Warren can deliver good barn-burning populist progressive speeches that connect with people and articulate issues that people know about that aren’t getting press coverage. It just depends on whether there are any Democrats running in 2014 who want that kind of support.
It depends on how many members of Congress, Senators, governors, and legislators her presence helps elect in 2014. And who runs away from her support.
Interesting that both Grimes and Tennant(despite her anti-Obama stance) both asked Warren to campaign with them, no?
Interesting, I hadn’t heard the intentionaly part.
I don’t buy it myself, but a lot of disgruntled progressives and even some mainstream Democrats do. Or course a number of them are still smarting over who failed to support Ned Lamont.
Ned Lamont taught me that enthusiasm is 99% bullshit. Numbers and metrics and data are what matters.
Leave Elizabeth Warren where she is for the time being. If she wants to run for President, she’ll say so. What happens to Progressive Liberal Democrats with brains, personality, and honesty when they become President?
Ask Obama.
Obama wasn’t ever a Progressive. not even Campaign Obama from ’08.
Would a strong but losing Warren primary campaign help or damage Hillary in the general?
… there is no bandwagon, and it’s a small movement.
Several points:
http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2014/07/30/elizabeth-warren-s-biggest-donors-say-she-d-be-out-
of-her-mind-to-run-for-president.html
I’m for Secretary Clinton for a lot of reasons, but I think Sen. Warren is a spectacular public servant whose voice I’d welcome in any race. I just don’t think she deserves to be Bill Bradley.
You can be for Hillary all you want. Just be aware that if she’s elected in ’16 she’ll only be a one-term president. I’m sure you’ll ask why. Unless you can give me a good reason why the economy will be improving for the 99%, when she’ll appoint more Rubin-ites. You just might want to ponder on that for a minute.
And as POTUS with an economy crumbling around her, she’ll make pronouncements as clueless as she did when protests in Egypt had Mubarek on the skids: “the government is stable.”
Wow this is too easy:
Are you suggesting Ready for Hillary is Madison Avenue? You might want to do some research, look into things a bit, get informed. It’s not – incredibly grassroots, surprised all the pros.
They’re not unnamed – they’re mostly named. Read the piece.
Uh yeah, it’s over 2.5 million people so far. Look at RFH’s Facebook presence, just check it out if you’re curious. Follow them on Twitter.
Barely a hair – and it’s 16 months till Iowa. It’s no longer early, and the day after the mid-terms, it’s actually pretty late.
It’s not just Tim Kaine – it’s a whole host of Dems, many Obama supporters, virtually his whole political team – lined up. C’mon I respect a love for Warren I really do, but it’s not happening.
Care to recite those reasons?
More neo-liberal economic policies and a more “robust” foreign policy (shoot first and ask questions later as HRC advocated for in Libya, Syria, and her hires have been doing in Urkraine fills me with foreboding and dread)? Maggie Thatcher was bad for the UK, but at least she earned her way to the top in her own right. Neither Poppy nor GWB did, and HRC wouldn’t either.
You defile the Democratic Party, our liberal tradition and Booman’s preserve by comparing Hillary Clinton to Maggie Thatcher and the Bushes.
Unclear how anyone couldn’t see Hillary Clinton as a legacy candidate. That’s exactly what GHWB and GWB were.
Business Week
Except Penn didn’t concoct this out of nothing in 2006. Long before then Clinton had publicly, if somewhat coyly, suggested that she viewed Thatcher as a role model.
Thatcher’s goal was to destroy institutional socialism in the UK. While we don’t call it socialism in the US, the DLC neo-liberalism goal has been the dismantling of the New Deal. And Bill Clinton made more progress on that agenda than the combined efforts of Reagan and GHWB.
I’ll wait for Booman to say that something defiles his preserve.
“our” liberal tradition? who you calling “we”?
as Marie already mentioned, Thatcher at least achieved power on her own rather than because of who her husband was.
Sorry – but it’s an intentional obscenity, unfair, intellectually incurious, and right of the America Rising playbook.
Based on recent memoir sales, HRC is barely beating Bob Gates and Ben Carson. She has a long way to go to beat “Palin’s” Going Rogue (2 million?!) or her own “Living History (1.1 million). (I haven’t a clue why anyone would want to read a ghostwritten memoir much less buy one.)
“This lead may say less about Hillary, however, than her unrealized opposition. Today, more Democrats are behind her. But they are not more excited about her. CNN polling finds that this cycle, as in 2007, four in 10 Democrats say they would be enthusiastic if Clinton were their nominee. That means a majority would not.”
The good folks at the Daily Kos, hardly a gang of DLC dead enders, solicited a poll that is pretty consistent with yours:
about 40% of kossacks are enthusiastic about Hillary
about 50% of kossacks think she would be fine as a candidate
precisely 8.45% despise the hated Democrats so much that they would sit out the election even if by doing so they would hand victory to the Republicans.
In my own case, if Victoria Wulsin were to mount a dark horse campaign I would drop Hilary like a barbell but short of that I will be happy voting for her.
I think Hillary Clinton’s support is a mile wide and a half-inch deep. Can’t nobody who supports her give me any of the POLICIES she’s for.
I’m not clinging to Warren, but I trust her on the domestic side.
Since I don’t trust Hillary on domestic or foreign policy…well….
I’m with you.
Why can’t this wait until primary season when we know who’s running? We still have midterm elections in a few months. There’s no need to prop Hillary up. She’s going to have to prove herself in the primary. The primary’s going to tell us the truth.
and bloggers want to admit. People have always liked the idea of Hillary more than the reality of Hillary. Her numbers will fall when she starts campaigning because she just a crappy politician with bad political instincts.
Interesting that Gary Hart is quoted in the article. A lot of his network is aligning themselves behind O’Malley’s run. He’s doing the hard work necessary for a primary win in Iowa and NH. Let’s see if Hillary is up for doing the same. I kind of doubt it myself.
Garry Hart’s ‘network’ is two guys and a dog.
Not even close.
Exactly.
Gary Hart – that’s hilarious.
What makes people think Warren has any desire to put herself through the hell of a presidential run? I’m not seeing it. She just doesn’t seem to be that much of a political animal or that ego-driven.
I agree that she’s not that ego-driven, and I don’t think she has any great desire to put herself through the hell of a presidential run.
BUT … I do think she’s a political animal, in the sense that she has excellent political instincts and judgment, as against Hillary’s tin ear and poor judgment.
If Warren should decide to run, then, it would NOT be because she’s ego-driven but because, politically, she “hears” the cries of a lot of people that she’d be a better president than Hillary Clinton.
And it’s that relative lack of ego, and genuine ability to connect with ordinary people and their problems, that would make her a strong candidate.
Warren is a standout in the Senate because she has real depth (a quality sorely lacking in the Senate and House) on personal finance and how the game has been changed over the past few decades to favor the wealthy over the working classes. This resonates for those that can still recall when the game wasn’t so heavily rigged against them and those that know they’re being cheated and have an idealized notion of what it was like a few decades ago. (Small houses, one car families, closets and dressers more empty than stuffed, etc.)
She’s great on this issue, but not because she’s a progressive but because she champions a return to the system that had been constructed mostly during FDR’s New Deal period was robust and worked better for more people than ever before. A reset would be welcome but it still leaves much work to be done on reducing income/wealth inequality.
On other issues Warren follows the accepted DEM party line which is fairly conservative. Whether that is because her impulses are conservative, those other issues don’t interest her much, or as a political novice and very busy Senator, she hasn’t formulated her on take on them is unknown. However, that would leave her as totally dependent on advisers, and likely drawn from the same talent pool as Obama tapped and Hillary would tap, not to make much difference between her and Hillary except on Warren’s signature issue. That’s a huge difference, but still far less than what is needed at this time in history. Would prefer that she become a giant in the Senate for the next two decades than run for POTUS, but might feel differently a few months from now.
The biggest drawback to any Warren campaign is the well advertised silliness of her most ardent enthusiasts. These are the people who built up in their minds a towering lefty savior from raw material of candidate Obama, and when president Obama refused to wave his magic wand and call forth Unicorns for Everyone they turned on him like orcas on a bleeding cub. The good Senator has far better sense than to stake her future on such an unreliable base.
Other than this the article is just more Third Way yah and Neoliberal blah and Dirty Hippies from the Sixties as if Oklahoma was the land of brown shoed squares. Mush from the Wimp, if you can allow me to steal from a different headline.
HRC is going to be 69 on election day 2016.
Warren is going to be 67 on election day 2016.
O’Malley is going to be 53 on election day 2016.
Age matters. Especially with our cult of personality elections.
I’m on the Anybody But Clinton bandwagon.