Mediaboss Marketing

Sorry to break the bad news to all you dreamy-eyed liberals, but it's time to stop wishin' and hopin': Elizabeth Warren isn't running for president. Really and truly.

Progressive Democrats have bombarded her office with postcards, signed online petitions and stood in the snow waving signs to get the junior senator from Massachusetts to run.

Warren didn't do much to encourage all this attention. Last fall when People magazine asked whether she would run, the senator wrinkled her nose, the magazine reported, and said, nondefinitively: I don't think so.... She then added, If there's any lesson I've learned in the last five years, it's don't be so sure about what lies ahead.... There are amazing doors that could open.

Since then, though, Warren repeatedly has slammed one door shut. I am not running for president, she's said over and over. She's pledged to serve her full term in the Senate through 2018. Of course, hardly anybody believes what a politician says, especially on the subject of career ambition. When Barack Obama arrived in the Senate in 2005, he too said he had no plans to run for president.

But over the last few months, Democrats who do politics for a living have concluded Warren really means it based not on what she's said, but on what she's done or, more precisely, left undone. She isn't traveling to Iowa or New Hampshire, Democratic strategist Tad Devine noted. She isn't putting together a team of people to build an organization. This is a case where no means no.

Why won't Warren run?

A challenge to Hillary Rodham Clinton would be a grueling battle against tall odds. In national polls, Clinton wins the support of about 60% of Democrats, against only 11% for Warren. A face-off also would pit the Democrats' two most prominent women against each other. It would be a bad day for Emily's List, said one Democratic operative.

Warren is fiery about her favorite causes such as reducing the influence of Wall Street banks and yet that's not the same fire in the belly required to run for president. She describes herself as an outside agitator, not a deal-maker, and you can't be an outsider in the Oval Office.

Last year she fought the Obama administration and her own party's Senate leadership to block the nomination of a former investment banker as undersecretary of the Treasury, and won although the nominee, Antonio Weiss, got a job that didn't require Senate confirmation. She's already signaled her opposition to President Obama's desired trade agreement with 11 countries around the Pacific.

That's why Warren is not running. But why has she been less than definitive? I suspect it's because being considered a potential presidential candidate is a surefire way to get attention from the media for her causes and ideas. When Warren gave a speech to the AFL-CIO last month demanding legislation to break up the Wall Street banks, it won far more coverage because she might some day run for president.

More:
Forget it, liberals: Elizabeth Warren is not running for president