Thanks for nothing, Elizabeth Warren: How the Democratic Party’s rock star missed her chance.... [View all]

Salon
3/1/2016

Thanks for nothing, Elizabeth Warren: How the Democratic Party’s rock star missed her chance, hurt the progressive agenda
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The appetite was there for a truly progressive candidate to topple the Clinton machine.

That candidate did not run

Elizabeth Warren could have been the biggest political story of 2016. Well, at least, the biggest story other than Donald Trump. Right now, she could have been coasting toward a Super Tuesday landslide and locking up the Democratic nomination. It doesn’t take a wild imagination to picture it.

Instead, Warren is nowhere to be found, unless you’re a Democratic donor on the receiving end of DNC email blasts signed by the Massachusetts senator. Raising money like this — or lending her name to these emails — might be her biggest contribution to the Democrats in the 2016 cycle. And unfortunately, that’s why Super Tuesday is likely to seal the nomination for Hillary Clinton tonight.

My point is not to relitigate Clinton vs. Bernie Sanders for the millionth time. That argument closed in Nevada, and screamed to a halt in South Carolina. Hillary Clinton will make a Democratic candidate in the same mold as her husband or Al Gore or John Kerry. If elected president, she’ll likely carry on the Obama legacy, appointing the right Supreme Court justices and blocking the worst excesses of the gerrymandered Republican Congress, while also remaining the same politician who served as the senator from Goldman Sachs and toured war zones with Lindsey Graham and John McCain. Even most of Clinton’s harshest critics from the left would pinch their noses and vote for her in a contest against Donald Trump.

Bernie Sanders ran a near-perfect race to make it this close, but was never likely to overcome Clinton’s superdelegate and electoral map advantages without more debates and a stronger, sharper performance in them.

What Sanders did, however, was demonstrate that with a different messenger — one willing to draw sharp contrasts, perhaps someone who was not a wild-haired socialist in his ’70s from Vermont — the appetite was there in 2016 for a truly progressive candidate to capture the Democratic nomination.

That candidate did not run.

Progressives of a pessimistic bent might feel that they just missed a once in a generation opportunity to reorient the Democratic Party.

Had Warren run, you could make the case that she would have swept to the nomination. A February 2015 MoveOn poll found that 79 percent of Iowa and New Hampshire Democrats wanted Warren to enter the presidential race, and showed Warren polling higher than Clinton in both states.

Keep in mind that this was well before Sanders’ summer surge, when the Vermont senator had single-digit support in most polls.....

Read the rest~
http://www.salon.com/2016/03/01/thanks_for_nothing_elizabeth_warren_how_the_democratic_partys_rock_star_missed_her_chance_hurt_the_progressive_agenda/

Its a moot point now, but I agree with this article. I often say to myself, "Thanks a lot Elizabeth" when I think on how the massively corrupt conservative third way Clinton2 has taken over the party. Total control.

People love Elizabeth. The media loves her. I've never witnessed a more effective speaker. She is sharp & on point & dynamic & quick on her feet, she would have nailed this thing.

Hillary will lose to Donald in the GE. But we have lost the party.