Despite her popularity via the Daily Show, her Facebook posts, the Huffington post articles, and other multi-media exposures hailing her as the new champion of the middle class, Senator Elizabeth Warren continues to shun the spotlight of Presidential candidacy. My question is: Why?
It's obvious to me that the Democratic Party's leadership has all but crowned Hillary Clinton as the shoe-in front runner, and also obvious that they are not aggressively recruiting other candidates. But why, with her singular ability to fire up the base, (especially the younger voters), put her key issues into the platform, and force Clinton to move to the left and away from the established power brokers of commerce, she does not want a place on the stage is beyond me.
It would seem a solemn duty that if one garners widespread support for being the people's voice, there also comes a responsibility to make those ideas and concerns a central part of the campaign. Should she, indeed, choose not to run, it would be a gross failure on her part. You cannot influence the dialogue of the election from the wings; one must be onstage to accomplish that.
If Hillary is in fact going to be our next President, I think Warren owes it to her adoring fans to get off her butt and hold Clinton's feet to the fire. Otherwise, issues like the TPP, student loans, banking practices, and the like, will fade into meaningless slogans designed to please and cajole average voters into swallowing yet another Washington insider merely to ward off the Republican enemy.
Senator Warren on stage, and on the campaign trail, may not win, but she can make "voting for the lesser of two evils" a more promising proposition. More appearances on the Daily Show during the campaign will do her, and us all, zero good. Unless she's afraid of actually winning, she needs to step up, throw her hat in the ring, and move her agenda forward.