Is Warren still thinking about it?
So Elizabeth Warren was asked for the millionth time if she is running for president, this time by
Sheila Bair:
[BAIR:] So are you going to run for president?
[WARREN:] No.
That is pretty Shermaneque. And indeed, meets the criteria established by the Run, Warren, Run group for taking "no" as an answer from Warren:
“She’s been very consistent in speaking in the present tense,” Neil Sroka, a spokesman for Democracy For America, which is involved in the “draft Warren” effort, tells me. “The way this speculation will end is if she says, ‘I am not running and I will not run.’ That would end the draft effort.”
Well Warren just said that. But the draft movement is
not moving on:
We understand that reporters are required to follow every twist and turn of the 2016 race, but let’s be clear: This isn’t a new position for Senator Elizabeth Warren. Senator Warren has been clear for years that she isn’t planning on running. If she were running, there wouldn’t be a need for a draft effort. We launched the Run Warren Run campaign to show Senator Elizabeth Warren the tremendous amount of grassroots enthusiasm and momentum that exists for her entering the 2016 presidential race and to encourage her to change her mind.”
It is certainly ironic that the draft movement is bemoaning the press following every turn of this. Isn't that what they want? But the more important piece on this it seems to me is the question of whether their continued efforts become counterproductive.
Greg Sargent articulates a theory of why the draft movement will continue:
[W]hile the primary goal of the Draft Warren movement is obviously to persuade her to run, the secondary goal is also important. The idea is that all of this can only help boost Warren’s visibility, which also boosts her influence within Congress, and over the Democratic Party, as a vehicle for the brand of feisty economic progressivism these groups support. And that, potentially, boosts their influence, or at least the influence of their agenda.
Accepting this theory as having been true, will it still be true now? Or will it just look silly? In some ways, the statement from Neil Sroka in December puts Run Warren Run in a bind. He said that if Warren says she's won't run, the draft movement would be over.
Well, she did. And it's not. Doesn't this create a credibility problem for them? At this point, I question whether the draft movement helps in the way Sargent describes. While Warren certainly has every right to change her mind, I doubt the draft movement will have anything to do with such an event.
It may not be time for Warren to close the door (personally I think she did long ago), but in terms of the expressed secondary goals of Run Warren Run, I think that ship has sailed. They look a little silly now, or maybe, a little mercenary.