Elizabeth Warren

...Naturally, the unaffiliated left is excited that Sanders is running. “MoveOn members have cheered on Sen. Sanders for years as he's stood up to the Wall Street banks and wealthy interests who have rigged the game in Washington and knee-capped our country’s middle-class and working families,” Anna Galland, the executive director of MoveOn.org, said in a statement. Adam Green, the co-founder of the Progressive Change Committee, echoed the enthusiasm: “The goal of many progressives in 2016 is to ensure that the election is fought over big, bold, economic populist ideas. Bernie Sanders will certainty help pull the debate in that direction, and he's a positive addition to the race."

Yet they still long for Warren to enter the race. “We and our allies continue to call on Sen. Elizabeth Warren to also bring her tireless advocacy for middle-class and working Americans to the race,” Galland said. “Our country will be stronger if she runs.” Why do liberals still yearn for a Warren campaign, with Sanders in the game? Electability. The left doesn’t believe that Sanders can top Clinton, whereas Warren just might. “We need Senator Elizabeth Warren in the race to make sure we have a Democratic nominee who will lead these fights all the way to the White House,” said Ready for Warren’s Erica Sagrans. Sanders, by implication, is not that nominee.

That analysis is correct. Sanders doesn’t have Warren’s charisma or her fundraising base. The “Run Warren Run” Facebook page has ten times more likes than the “Ready for Bernie” page. Her national profile far exceeds his. Among the chattering classes, Warren would be a serious challenger to Clinton. Sanders isn’t.

Sanders’s best-case scenario goes something like this. Clinton comes out in favor of the TPP and the fast track authority that makes it easier to pass the trade bill, infuriating unions that consider trade a top issue of the Democratic primaries. In a major address on the 2016 race Tuesday, AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka said, “We expect those who seek to lead our nation forward to oppose fast track. There is no middle ground, and the time for deliberations is drawing to a close.” That is a clear message to Clinton: Oppose the trade deal or else. Bernie Sanders could be that else, if not as a bona fide threat to win, at least as an alternative recipient of campaign monies.

But even in that best-case scenario, with labor groups supporting him over Clinton, Sanders has approximately no chance of winning. When I asked Ruy Teixeira, a Democratic strategist, whether that hypothetical could put Clinton’s nomination at stake, he responded, “An easy one: No.”

To be fair to Sanders, he’s not entering the race expecting a victory. Citing “confidants,” the Washington Post reported Tuesday that he was mostly entering the race to participate in the debates....

http://www.newrepublic.com/article/121674/liberals-want-elizabeth-warren-over-bernie-sanders-because-she-can-win