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The biggest signal that this sends is that Warren, who has said she’s not running for president about 50 million times but you never know, is … still not running for president. In accepting this leadership position, she’s helping craft the party’s top position and priority, all right, ensuring smooth sailing for Hillary Clinton to win the Democratic presidential nomination.

You don’t set the groundwork for an outsider campaign against the Democratic establishment by moving further inside the Democratic establishment. Especially right now, when we’re nearing form-an-exploratory-committee season. As Vox writes, “if she intended to challenge the powerful front-runner Hillary Clinton for the Democratic nomination, she’d really have to start planning about now.”

Warren’s decision to improve her standing within the Senate, rather than start building a groundwork for a presidential campaign, may represent an overall shift within the “liberal groups” with whom she intends to liaise. Rather than rally around an alternative to Hillary Clinton, the goal ahead of 2016 may now be to get some assurances from Hillary Clinton on progressive issues. Consider this statement today from the Progressive Change Campaign Committee, a group that’s made its name by affixing itself to the Warren brand:

“As Elizabeth Warren advocates for big ideas like reforming Wall Street, making college affordable, and expanding Social Security benefits, her voice will now be even louder — because she’ll be at the Democratic leadership table,” the PCCC said in an email to supporters on Thursday.

So Elizabeth Warren can do her Elizabeth Warren stuff from the Democratic leadership table. This comes a few days after MSNBC reported that the PCCC is trying to open some sort of diplomatic channel with Clinton. There are conversations about conversations and meetings about meetings in the works!

Adam Green, the co-founder of the Progressive Change Campaign Committee, one of the groups most closely associated with the so-called “Warren wing of the Democratic Party,” said his organization reached out to Clinton’s camp before the election and that a meeting was coming “very soon.”

He declined to name the Clinton advisers with whom he’s been in contact, saying discussions have so far been limited to “conversations about having conversations.” “We want to keep as open a line of communication with Hillary Clinton and her team as possible,” he told msnbc. ...

Their message is that Clinton should adopt the kind of economic inequality issues championed by Warren, both for substantive and political reasons. “This is the path to victory in the primary and general election,” Green and co-founder Stephanie Taylor wrote in an Op-Ed in The Hill.

more:
http://www.salon.com/2014/11/14/r_i_p_elizabeth_warren_16_fantasy_why_shes_really_probably_not_running_for_president_now/