Worrying that "the Democratic contest looks like it will be a foggy, repetitive march toward Hillary Clinton" and that there needs to be a primary challenger from Hillary Clinton's left to "energize the Democratic Party’s liberal base," CBS political director John Dickerson pounded out a July 17 piece at Slate.com urging the Bay State's senior senator, "Run, Elizabeth, Run!" "Stop thinking and start running," urges a caption under a photograph of a pensive-looking Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.)
Sure, Warren most likely wouldn't win, but "she would till the ground, putting grit and the smell of earth in the contest" Dickerson insisted. Attempting to mask his partisan rooting interest as purely a political junkie's thought exercise at how to make the 2016 contest more robust and exciting, Dickerson compared Warren to the role Newt Gingrich played in the 2008 primary contest and later argued that conservatives should cheer Warren entering the race because she would help "expose" the socialist bent of the donkey party or "bruise Clinton" sufficiently to give the GOP a stronger chance at retaking the Oval Office (emphasis mine):
Whether you agree with Warren’s ideas or whether she would even make a good president is immaterial to the benefits of her candidacy. She would keep the campaign lively and focused on ideas. That is the role Newt Gingrich occasionally played in 2012. It’s the role that former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush would play in 2016 on issues like Common Core education standards and immigration.
[...]
The reason a Warren candidacy should have broad ideological appeal is that if you’re a conservative there’s something in her campaign for you, too. It will either expose Democrats for the socialist one-worlders that they are or bruise Clinton for the coming general election fight. But there’s also a more high-minded reason. If Rick Santorum is right and the Republican Party will only flourish at the presidential level if it promotes conservative solutions for middle-class voters, then this cause will be helped along by a Democratic contest that keeps the battle of ideas for the middle class at the center of the debate. While Democrats are debating their offerings to that constituency, it will give conservatives a chance to offer their alternatives.
While there arguably be some merit to Dickerson's arguments -- a march to a coronoation for Hillary won't necessarily excite the Democratic base -- it's safe to say the liberal media never feel that way about Republican primary contests, where they're forever urging the Newt Gingriches and Rick Santorums of the party to stand down and let the moderate, establishment wing coast to coronation.
The early buzz in the liberal media on the GOP side of the 2016 race is that the only hope the party has is nominating a Jeb Bush or a Chris Christie or maybe re-tapping Mitt Romney -- who could run essentially a "see I told you so" campaign. The media are ever eager to portray challengers to the establishment from the right not as "putting grit and the smell of earth in the contest" but as crazy uncles that the GOP would rather keep in the attic until after the general election.
