Elizabeth Warren, Kingmaker?

[n2doc]

—By Erika Eichelberger

Democrats' chances of keeping control of the Senate in 2014 don't look great. FiveThirtyEight polling guru Nate Silver recently predicted that "Republicans are now slight favorites to win at least six seats and capture the chamber," and the Washington Post's Monkey Cage blog gives the GOP an 80 percent chance of taking the Senate in 2014. Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) isn't up for election this year. But the liberal darling is throwing her name—and her fundraising mojo—behind an effort to preserve the Dems' majority.

Warren has already raised $1.2 million this election season for 22 Senate candidates, including Sens. Jeff Merkley (D-Ore.), Dick Durbin (D-Ill.), and Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.), according to Warren's political operation. That's a lot of dough. "Most members of Congress are not capable of raising that much for their colleagues…She's a rock star," says Viveca Novak, the editorial director of the Center for Responsive Politics, which tracks the influence of money on politics. And in late March, the Massachusetts senator expanded her 2014 efforts even further, joining up with the Progressive Change Campaign Committee (PCCC), a liberal PAC, to endorse two lucky Senate candidates: Rick Weiland, who is running to replace outgoing Democratic Sen. Tim Johnson of South Dakota, and Rep. Bruce Braley, who is vying to take the place of retiring Sen. Tom Harkin (D-Iowa).

Landing a Warren endorsement is great news for candidates without a lot of name recognition at the national level, says John Halpin, a senior fellow at the liberal Center for American Progress. Weiland, the South Dakota candidate, says Warren's endorsement has been "extremely helpful" so far, adding that after Warren and the PCCC sent out their fundraising pitch, "there was quite a spike [in donations] in the first couple of days." (The Weiland campaign does not yet have final fundraising numbers for the initial Warren-PCCC push.)

Officials with the Braley campaign say the same thing. The campaign couldn't give out fundraising details, but an Iowa Democrat familiar with Braley's campaign says, "Let me put it this way. There's a reason why the [Warren] endorsement was rolled out before the March 31 fundraising deadline."

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http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2014/04/elizabeth-warren-pccc-senate-democrats

[Demeter]

1. Elizabeth Warren: QUEEN

None of this second banana stuff.

[Jasana]

4. +1000! nt.

[pscot]

5. Our first woman president

[pacalo]

2. "I'm from the Elizabeth Warren wing of the Democratic Party."

[JDPriestly]

7. Me too!

[Jasana]

3. I was just coming here to see if this article had been posted.

Every time we send money to the PCCC or Act Blue we should have a memo area where we can type: "I'm from the Elizabeth Warren wing of the Democratic Party" so that everyone knows for sure "shit's getting real."

I love the photograph that went with the article.

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[belltower]

6. If not prez then how about majority leader

EAW may want a specific legislative agenda more than the presidency.

[JDPriestly]

8. We need Elizabeth Warren in the White House so that she can appoint the Fed chair,

the Sec. of the Treasury, the Sec. of Commerce, possibly Supreme Court justices and other judges as well as the heads of all the agencies, especially those like the SEC that regulate Wall Street and others that regulate commodities trading, banking, etc. She cannot do that in the Senate.

We need Elizabeth Warren in the White House.

The causes that she is willing to fight for are best fought for in the Oval Office.

Her legislative agenda cannot pass on her vote alone. And what good does it do to pass legislation if the SEC, for example, refuses to enforce it.