The “Run, Warren, Run” campaign has hit a wall. Organizers say they’re suspending the movement to draft Massachusetts U.S. Senator Elizabeth Warren into the presidential race.
Ben Wikler with MoveOn.org, which launched the effort, spoke with WBUR.
“Our theory was that by removing some of the arguments against running — especially the argument that if she ran she wouldn’t be a serious contender — we’d hoped we’d be able to persuade her. That hasn’t happened,” Wikler says. “but what we have done is shown everyone is that there really is a path to a serious presidential bid by running as an unapologetic progressive candidate and we think that other candidates are moving into that space.”
Wikler says there are now three candidates in the presidential race who sound a lot like Senator Warren.
The group is closing its offices in Iowa and New Hampshire, but still plans to deliver a petition to Warren containing more than 350,000 signatures.
“If Warren decided tomorrow, or in a month or in three months, that she wanted to run, I think that this whole movement would come back together and we would be right there with her. I think she’d be a viable candidate from the first moment,” he says. “Do I think that that’s likely? At this point, no. But, as we know, nothing is certain in politics.”