In The Arena Why We’re Suspending the “Run Warren Run” Campaign But we’re still declaring victory.

Ilya Sheyman is the executive director of MoveOn.org Political Action. Charles Chamberlain is executive director of Democracy for America. Run Warren Run is a project of MoveOn.org Political Action in partnership with Democracy for America.

Today we announce the suspension of our campaign to draft Elizabeth Warren into the presidential race. There’s no sugar-coating it: We didn’t achieve our central goal. But there’s a bigger story that gives us tremendous hope: as one headline put it, “ Elizabeth Warren may not be running, but she’s in the 2016 race anyway.”

In the six months since we launched the Run Warren Run effort, Senator Warren’s agenda and message have transformed the American political landscape. Echoing Warren’s famous adage that “the game is rigged,” Hillary Clinton declared in her campaign announcement that “the deck is still stacked in favor of those at the top.” Bernie Sanders emerged out of the gate as a far stronger contender than political bookmakers could have imagined just a few months ago. And Martin O’Malley launched his campaign on Saturday calling for the breaking up of big banks and jailing of Wall Street crooks. Even some Republicans are positioning themselves to run against inequality (although their proposals would exacerbate it).


To be sure, Warren—and grassroots economic populism more broadly—was already a rising force well before our efforts began. But look closely at the way the Run Warren Run effort unfolded, and you’ll see why, for us and for the 365,000 people who signed up, this campaign has already succeeded. Although Run Warren Run may not have sparked a candidacy, it ignited a movement.

So what did Run Warren Run do? And why did it work?

1) We built 2016's first and biggest on-the-ground operation in Iowa and New Hampshire—and showed that voters and activists are hungry for progressive fighters.

We opened three field offices. We hired nine full-time organizers. We recruited volunteer captains all across New Hampshire and in 90 of Iowa’s 99 counties; drew endorsements from dozens of state legislators, local party leaders, and prominent grassroots activists; and set up tables at every political event and county fair we could find—signing up thousands of supporters. The response to our field campaign matched our polling: our surveys testing Warren’s message, agenda, and biography among likely primary voters and caucus-goers found enormous enthusiasm. We turned that energy into an organization.

By the time other candidates began entering the race, we’d already built the kind of campaign infrastructure a candidate aims for in the final months before a caucus or primary. And our talented field team did all of this without an actual candidate in the race.

The significance of this wasn’t lost on insiders or journalists. As our effort caught steam, it became clear that if Warren ran, she’d be a top-tier contender—and that Democrats in these early states wanted a race, not a coronation.

2) When Warren spoke, we made sure people listened. Even more than usual.

Warren’s an electrifying communicator. She’s done for C-SPAN what Mad Men did for AMC. Nonetheless, the reality of American politics is that at a certain point before each presidential election, the nation’s political hive mind turns its focus towards the race for the White House—at the exclusion of almost everything else.

Thus the second pillar of our strategy: make sure that Warren’s voice wouldn’t get lost in the 2016 chatter.

We worked to amplify her voice wherever and whenever possible—not just among Hill reporters covering the minutia of legislative debates, but on the nation’s biggest stage. By raising the possibility of a Warren run for the presidency, we elevated the significance of her words and actions. At a moment when newsrooms were reassigning top journalists from their regular beats over to 2016, they now had to keep tabs on Warren.

In this context, obscure battles took on front-page importance. Just look at Warren’s successful effort to block the nomination of Wall Street veteran Antonio Weiss to a key post at the Treasury Department: unlike many nomination fights that have come and gone with little notice, this conflict became a bellwether for the ascendance of “Warren Wing” Democrats over the Wall Street-friendly forces that have long called the shots. And signature Warren issues now found wider currency—as when 42 Senate Democrats joined Warren in voting for an expansion of Social Security benefits. On issues from student debt to the TPP, Warren has come to wield the kind of agenda-setting, debate-defining power normally reserved for potential party nominees.

3) We sent a message to Democrats: Take on the special interests rigging the system, and we’ll have your back.

In this day and age, the public isn’t thought to have a say in choosing its candidates.

Political scientists talk about an “invisible primary” in which, long before campaigns are announced, contenders vie for the support of key mega-donors, interest groups, and party mandarins. In the Citizens United era, this has gotten worse: Witness the GOP hopefuls kowtowing to the Koch brothers and Sheldon Adelson. But this kind of politics is toxic for democracy. It creates a situation in which the public merely rubber-stamps candidates (and platforms) pre-selected by the powerful.

Run Warren Run struck a blow for a different vision of democracy. We showed that grassroots progressives are ready to lift up candidates who refuse to kiss the rings of those corrupting our political system and rigging our economy.

You’d better believe that every ambitious progressive politico in the nation was paying attention. We’ve helped to shift the incentives, demonstrating that there’s a grassroots army holding up a career ladder for public servants who actually seek to serve the public.

We don’t begrudge Warren for not choosing to climb that ladder. But we’re proud that everyone now knows it’s there.

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Running for president is at once an utterly public decision and a deeply personal one. Senator Warren has heard our case, and she declined to run. We respect her decision. If she chooses to reconsider, due to shifting circumstances or a new intuition, the movement that urged her to run could regroup at a moment’s notice. But regardless of whether that happens, we’re thrilled at how far we’ve come—and by what’s next.

On June 8, after delivering our petition, we will formally suspend the Run Warren Run campaign—and double down on the movement that it helped energize. Going forward, the hundreds of thousands of us who joined Run Warren Run will pour our energies into standing and fighting by Warren’s side. And there are many fights afoot. We’ll help wage the battle against fast-track authority for the special-interest wish-fulfillment machine known as the Trans-Pacific Partnership. We’ll stand with workers demanding higher wages and the right to organize. And we’ll keep lifting up the voices of those calling for a country where education is not synonymous with debt, where Social Security can live up to its name, and where money does not equal speech—or buy overwhelming influence.

Today, we’re at a crossroads. One way leads to an ever-accelerating loop of rising inequality and the consolidation of political power by those who benefit from a rigged system. The other road, towards an America that works for everyone, is much harder to follow. There is no third way.

The rise of Elizabeth Warren, the effort to draft her for president, and the surging progressive spirit of the 2016 Democratic field and electorate—these are all important by themselves, but ultimately, they’re all tremors presaging a much deeper tectonic shift in American politics. Just as the progressive movement and New Deal set the stage for the rise of the great American middle class a century ago, we’re due for a profound political reckoning that restores our founders’ dream of government by and for the people. No one candidate can deliver that. It’s up to all of us.