Talking Points Memo
reports:
Two progressive
grassroots groups, MoveOn.org and Howard Dean’s Democracy for
America, announced Tuesday that they would launch efforts to draft
Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) into the race, if their members
approved.“There is too much at stake to have anything other than our best
candidates in the debate,” Ilya Sheyman, executive director of
MoveOn.org Political Action, said in a statement. “We are prepared
to show Senator Warren that she has the support she needs to
enter—and win—the presidential race.”If a majority of its members okay it, MoveOn.org plans to spend at
least $1 million to convince Warren to seek the White House. That
would include staffing up in states like Iowa and New Hampshire,
assembling volunteers and small-dollar donors à la the Ready for
Hillary PAC, and media buys. Democracy for America didn’t detail
its plans, but noted that a previous poll of its members had Warren
with a nearly 20-point advantage over Clinton.
Left-wing dissatisfaction with Clinton has two main components:
opposition to her hawkish foreign policy, and distrust for her cozy
ties with Wall Street. These have been the themes for almost every
politician who’s been pondering a populist insurgency in the
primaries (as opposed to those establishment figures, such as Joe
Biden or Martin
O’Malley, who would not being challenging Clinton from the
left). War and Wall Street: Jim Webb hits both notes. Bernie
Sanders hits both notes. When Brian Schweitzer
looked like he might run, he hit both notes.
Elizabeth Warren does not hit both notes. Wall Street is a big
issue for her; war is not. As Danny Vinik
pointed out in October, she hardly ever says anything about
foreign policy at all. Her clearest views are
on Israel, where there doesn’t seem to be much daylight between
her and Hillary. The only substantial split Vinik found between
Warren and the White House on an internationa issue was her
September vote against aid to the Syrian rebels. But there are
absolutely no signs that, should she run for president, she’d make
that a significant part of her campaign—let alone any of the issues
where she doesn’t differ from the liberal interventionists, such as
Iran sanctions, or where she simply refrains from speaking,
such as the drone war.
Of course, she might not run. She probably won’t run.
But this is the person MoveOn and Democracy for America are making
a vehicle for their dreams of insurgency: a senator who never talks
about empire. Is that simply because they think she’s the strongest
possible challenger to Clinton? Or are they uncomfortable backing a
candidate whose criticisms of a Clinton foreign policy would be, by
extension, criticisms of the current White House too? Or do they
just ultimately not care much about the issue?
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