Politico (of course, who else?) lays out the back-room dealings that led up to Elizabeth Warren being named to a leadership position:
When Reid was in talks with Warren about a job in Senate leadership earlier this month, Schumer suggested tapping moderate Sen. Mark Warner, too, to balance out her progressive politics — or perhaps making her a “liaison to liberal groups,” a narrower job than what Reid had proposed, according to sources familiar with the private talks.
Warren, a Massachusetts Democrat, said no to both of Schumer’s suggestions, later taking the job as a policy adviser to Schumer’s messaging operation.
Chuck Schumer, while ostensibly the third-ranked Democrat, is actually positioned to be the next leader after Harry Reid fails to be reelected in 2016 or chooses to step down.
Warren’s rise in Senate leadership – and her popularity among grassroots liberals – represents an unexpected presence in Schumer’s leadership orbit, where he has spent years cultivating a reputation as one of the masterminds of Democratic messaging.
As one Senate Democratic source put it: “The turf [Schumer] thought he knew may have shifted beneath his feet.”
Warren as a popular and influential member of the leadership will complicate his next moves toward the top position.
There are signs that Schumer is keenly aware that his time to run for leader is coming up. Schumer refuses to say whether he will take the top Democratic spot as the ranking member on the Senate Banking Committee in the next Congress, although an announcement on this may come imminently. The post is important for the financial interests in his home state of New York. But taking the job would put him in a bind between his allies in the banking world and the Warren-led, anti-Wall Street wing of his caucus whose support he’d need to win a contested leadership race.
The disastrous midterms have added to his complications.
In the aftermath of the elections, Reid thought about ways to allay concerns over his own leadership style — and brought in Warren as the most visible effort to shake things up. When Reid first considered elevating Warren earlier this month, the first senator he told was Schumer. Reid initially thought about dividing up the Democratic Steering and Outreach Committee, making Warren a co-chair alongside Klobuchar, an idea the freshman rebuffed.
Schumer, worried about the lack of moderates on the newly reconstituted leadership team, wanted to bring Warner, a Big Business-friendly Virginia Democrat, to balance out Warren’s ideological views — another idea the Massachusetts senator dismissed, according to Democratic insiders.
Last week, as negotiations were intensifying over Warren’s new role, Schumer floated to Warren the idea that she would serve as a “liaison” to liberal groups under his messaging shop, known as the Democratic Policy and Communications Committee.
Warren scoffed at the idea of serving as a “liberal liaison,” but that job description leaked out into the press in any event. “I don’t quite understand it,” she told The Huffington Post.
Reid’s office later issued a statement saying Warren would help shape the messaging strategy of the DPCC, which Schumer runs. She ultimately chose her new title: strategic policy adviser to the DPCC.
I don’t quite understand it? Warren is obviously a diplomat and a humorist in addition to all her other dazzling talents.