Sen. Elizabeth Warren has been saying for a long time that she's not a candidate for the presidency. Those who know her, who call her friend, have always believed that, unlike so many run-of-the-mill politicians, she wasn't being coy about running. They know she is not a typical politician, which happens to be one of the many reasons she's so popular.
Some people have parsed her claims of not being a candidate, arguing, among other things, that she used the present not the future tense when she answered the question and was thus cleverly, sneakily leaving the door open. Even when she said a flat "no," a few claimed she still wasn't absolutely ruling out a presidential campaign.
On the Today Show Tuesday morning, she said it again. Made it utterly clear. Left no room for doubt. No linguistic crevice for parsing:
Savannah Guthrie: You didn't think you would get away with this interview without my asking you point blank: Are you going to run for president?
Warren: No. I’m not running and I’m not going to run. I’m in Washington. I’ve got this really great job and a chance to try and make a difference on things that really matter. [...] There's a lot to fight over right this minute."
Guthrie: Let me make sure that we underscore this and maybe bold it and put it in all caps. Because I have to tell you I have read every single interview you've done in the last year where people ask you 'Will you run for president?' and it has seemed that you were hedging a little bit in the past. I don't hear that hedging now. Are you unequivocally and categorically saying "I'm not running for president in 2016"?
Warren: I'm not running. I'm not running.
She couldn't make it any clearer if she slammed her fist on the table. No doubt we—Democrats, progressives, leftists, Americans—would be well-served by having Sen. Warren or a candidate like her running for president next year. We could also use 50 more like her or further to the left in the Senate. And a few hundred in the House. Not to mention thousands in our state legislatures as well as the
stunning number of other elected posts. We need to focus energy on filling those seats so that when the day comes that an Elizabeth Warren does make it to the White House, she has a deep bench of allies—elected representatives from city councils to Congress—fighting for the interests of working-class Americans, which is most of us.