If the liberal Democrats are unhappy, it's all good
by digby
There's a lot of chatter about this Noam Scheiber article discussing the notion of Elizabeth Warren running to Hillary Clinton's left for the presidential nomination in 2016. I'd be very surprised if it happens, but if it does I think it would be great. But then I'm a big fan of primaries because they make candidates have to fight out the agenda their own voters want them to enact and that's as it should be. Coronations are unAmerican.
I've been amused by the fact that Clinton is now so popular when once every remotely positive comment about her (or in defense of her) by a liberal had to be prefaced with "I'm no Hillary fan but ..." Frankly, I think the reason so many Democrats are lining up behind Hillary is because of the lingering emotions of 2008. As Rebecca Traister so beautifully illustrated in her book,"Big Girls Don't Cry", that primary race was unusually ugly and I think a lot of people are still unnerved by what rose to the surface during those days. In fact, Chuck Todd just told me that the Democrats who were the most hostile to her in 2008, educated white men, are overwhelmingly for her this time. But hey, that's completely predictable. Clinton was a good girl and didn't complain and did as she was told and now the men in charge have decided that it's ok for her to be elected. (That's certainly how it usually works in the business world, anyway.)
Still, ideological liberals are going to be upset if she runs as an unreconstructed New Dem and it would be good for her and the party if she got some heat and had to run to the left. The Republicans are so screwed up that she's probably a shoo-in (just as Obama was in 2008) and there is no reason she will have to be a centrist to be accepted. She's got room to be progressive --- if she wants to be. Unfortunately, I'm not convinced that any member of the Democratic establishment is all that progressive. What's the old song? Oh, that's right: money changes everything.
Unfortunately, all this talk about a Warren run that is highly unlikely to happen means that liberals will probably be mad at Clinton for being too centrist and also mad at Elizabeth Warren for betraying them by not running. Unfortunately, the conventional wisdom amongst Democrats has long been that as long as liberals are feeling betrayed, everyone else will be happy.
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