MoveOn Moves On From Warren

MoveOn.org has learned the limits of on-line petitions, just as California Conservatives have also accepted that Condoleezza Rice will not run for US Senate in 2016.

They have not given up hope, necessarily, but the organization has suspended their campaign to induce US Senator Elizabeth Warren (D-Massachusetts) to run for President to the left of imploding front-runner Hillary Clinton.

In their latest eblast: Suspending the Run Warren Run campaign–here's what we accomplished

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they look on the bright side of what (if anything) they have accomplished:


Last December, MoveOn members set out to do two things when we launched our Run Warren Run campaign: illuminate and broaden the path for Senator Elizabeth Warren to run for president in 2016, should she decide to do so; and build a grassroots movement to fight alongside her.

A lesson for conservatives: more than getting a candidate to run, or helping other candidates to win, a grassroots organization prepares the way for moving the culture in the right direction, long after the campaign season is over.

Six months after starting this journey, we've helped demonstrate the tremendous base of grassroots support and energy—not just for Elizabeth Warren, but for her vision of a democracy restored and an economy that works for everyone.

The economy certainly worked for Lizzie, who flipped houses and got rich. Is she flipping the finger at the Main Street working man, all while preaching hate against Wall Street?

Now, we're shifting our focus to support that vision.
Next week, we'll visit Sen. Warren's office in Washington to deliver our final petition, with all 365,000 voices calling on her to run for president—and then we'll suspend the Run Warren Run campaign.

This is their last chance. 350k petitions so that Warren will run. Do they all want to donate $100 each to make her step out, too? Most grassroots activists have no understanding of the funding and drain on time and energy required for a campaign. How few of them understand the fatigue then frustration of running for a national, nationwide office, only to come up short. Men and women do not suspend their lives indefinitely for a pipedream.

In the future, grassroots efforts like MoveOn.org have to do more than gathering a bunch of signatures. Did they provide extensive polling to prove that a Warren candidacy would turn into a Warren Presidency?

The National Journal stated that Warren's "power lies in her outsized influence, not just for a freshman senator, but for virtually any elected official in Washington."¹ Together, we've been part of a movement that's helped build that power and propelled Sen. Warren to the forefront of the Democratic Party.

All while promoting Warren, they are demoting Democratic chances of taking back the White House. Keep up on the great work, MoveOn!

MoveOn members, Run Warren Run supporters, and our partners at Democracy for America and the New York Working Families Party all helped ensure that Warren's name and populist progressive agenda stayed present in media coverage and polling about the presidential race.

Elizabeth Warren (photo by Tim Pierce)

One comment: "Populist" and "progressive" are contradictory terms, since the progressive agenda is an elitist movement which seeks to deprive people of power over their everyday lives and individual decisions. From Woodrow Wilson to the present day, progressives decry the limited, enumerated powers of the Constitution, and have sought to enhance the power of unelected, unaccountable bureaucrats, academics, and all other "know-better" activists at the expense of the men and women who endure the consequences of government decision-making.

We've put forth our best arguments to convince her, but the decision of whether to run ultimately rests, as it always has, with Sen. Warren. Now, our people-powered force is changing course and making it our top priority to join her in the big fights ahead—like stopping Fast Track authority for the Trans-Pacific Partnership and fighting the student debt crisis.

To their credit, putting the TPP and Student issues up front will galvanize otherwise uncommitted or uninterested voters, particularly young people. Ironically, the TPP conflict is also helping conservatives who want to beat back the federal government's legislative secrecy. As for the student debt crisis, where does all that money go, which has induced so much debt into graduate lives?

The very progressives who have infiltrated universities around the country helped create the undue burden on young graduates, demanding easy grants and college loans to bolster enrollment and massive, non-academic investments, like sports and recreational facilities. If students really were seeking an education, and a degree for marketable employment, they would not enroll in effete universities bent on pushing progressive propaganda at a higher, taxpayer-subsidized price.