Campaigning hard for a candidate who isn't

[RiverLover]

Campaigning hard for a candidate who isn't
4/25/15



DOVER, N.H. — Kurt Ehrenberg spent three hours one day this week trying to convince people to try to convince Elizabeth Warren to run for president.

...Snip...

“We wouldn’t be running this campaign,” said Charles Chamberlain, the executive director of Democracy for America, “if we didn’t think it was very possible.”

“This is our priority,” said Ben Wikler, the Washington director of MoveOn.org, “and we don’t have plans to stop.”

Run Warren Run, founded and funded by Democracy for America and MoveOn.org, launched in December. The group has nine paid staffers in Iowa and two paid staffers in New Hampshire. It is about to hire two more in New Hampshire. It has offices in Iowa in Des Moines and Cedar Rapids and in New Hampshire in Manchester, in a small, drab building catty-corner form a pizza place, the windows plastered with placards.

So far, according to Chamberlain and Wikler, Run Warren Run has spent approximately $1.25 million, on staff, signs, shirts, cards, stickers and rent. The tally of names who have signed up on the cards or online asking her to run: 325,000. Next up? Maybe more staff in Iowa and New Hampshire, maybe staff in other states, maybe ads on TV.

...They say there’s time for Warren to get in; Bill Clinton, after all, didn’t announce his 1992 candidacy until October 1991. They point, too, to precedent: The one time Warren ran for public office, she initially didn’t want to....

http://www.politico.com/story/2015/04/elizabeth-warren-2016-new-hampshire-117332.html

And still no calls from Liz to these organizations, asking them to stop their efforts. Would so love for her to change her mind.

[L0oniX]

1. Sanders/Warren 2016

[RiverLover]

2. ,,,

[Agschmid]

3. Think DFA will back Sanders now?

[RiverLover]

4. Eventually, maybe. Not yet.

...Naturally, the unaffiliated left is excited that Sanders is running. “MoveOn members have cheered on Sen. Sanders for years as he's stood up to the Wall Street banks and wealthy interests who have rigged the game in Washington and knee-capped our country’s middle-class and working families,” Anna Galland, the executive director of MoveOn.org, said in a statement. Adam Green, the co-founder of the Progressive Change Committee, echoed the enthusiasm: “The goal of many progressives in 2016 is to ensure that the election is fought over big, bold, economic populist ideas. Bernie Sanders will certainty help pull the debate in that direction, and he's a positive addition to the race."

Yet they still long for Warren to enter the race. “We and our allies continue to call on Sen. Elizabeth Warren to also bring her tireless advocacy for middle-class and working Americans to the race,” Galland said. “Our country will be stronger if she runs.” Why do liberals still yearn for a Warren campaign, with Sanders in the game? Electability. The left doesn’t believe that Sanders can top Clinton, whereas Warren just might. “We need Senator Elizabeth Warren in the race to make sure we have a Democratic nominee who will lead these fights all the way to the White House,” said Ready for Warren’s Erica Sagrans. Sanders, by implication, is not that nominee.

That analysis is correct. Sanders doesn’t have Warren’s charisma or her fundraising base. The “Run Warren Run” Facebook page has ten times more likes than the “Ready for Bernie” page. Her national profile far exceeds his. Among the chattering classes, Warren would be a serious challenger to Clinton. Sanders isn’t.

Sanders’s best-case scenario goes something like this. Clinton comes out in favor of the TPP and the fast track authority that makes it easier to pass the trade bill, infuriating unions that consider trade a top issue of the Democratic primaries. In a major address on the 2016 race Tuesday, AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka said, “We expect those who seek to lead our nation forward to oppose fast track. There is no middle ground, and the time for deliberations is drawing to a close.” That is a clear message to Clinton: Oppose the trade deal or else. Bernie Sanders could be that else, if not as a bona fide threat to win, at least as an alternative recipient of campaign monies.

But even in that best-case scenario, with labor groups supporting him over Clinton, Sanders has approximately no chance of winning. When I asked Ruy Teixeira, a Democratic strategist, whether that hypothetical could put Clinton’s nomination at stake, he responded, “An easy one: No.”

To be fair to Sanders, he’s not entering the race expecting a victory. Citing “confidants,” the Washington Post reported Tuesday that he was mostly entering the race to participate in the debates....

http://www.newrepublic.com/article/121674/liberals-want-elizabeth-warren-over-bernie-sanders-because-she-can-win