Suddenly it's all about "the rift" They've decided that Elizabeth "Granny" Warren should be next. Hillary is being deposed. Hence "the rift" TM

WASHINGTON — Senator Elizabeth Warren once famously said that she was willing to see “plenty of blood and teeth left on the floor” in her fight against Wall Street excess.

And the Massachusetts Democrat finally found the perfect moment to throw a punch.

Ms. Warren, who entered Congress with a liberal halo of anti-Wall Street credibility, took her most high-profile and tenacious Senate stand last week over a single provision in a $1.1 trillion spending bill, one that would roll back portions of the 2010 Dodd-Frank Act, the financial industry regulatory law.

Taking to the Senate floor, Ms. Warren implored her Democratic colleagues not to support the deal — and in the process threatened the entire bipartisan spending package that would avert a government shutdown. Though the bill narrowly passed the House on Thursday evening and appeared headed for passage in the Senate, Ms. Warren’s relentless fight to defeat it elevated her status as the leader of her party’s liberal base.

Her effort to lead that revolt exposed emerging rifts between the progressive wing and the centrist middle in a Democratic Party struggling to find its footing after losing its majority in the Senate and falling further into the minority in the House in the midterm elections.

It also put Ms. Warren at odds with President Obama, who supports the compromise bill despite his criticism of the provision, and other Democrats, including Senator Harry Reid of Nevada, the majority leader.

Many in the party believe that their losses in November can be attributed to the lack of a muscular, coherent message about how Democrats would address economic anxieties, particularly among working-class whites.

That void offers new opportunity for Ms. Warren, whose populist leanings and fiery, us-versus-them speeches resonate well with organized labor and other workers left struggling since the financial crisis.

The groundswell that Ms. Warren helped stoke last week offered an early glimpse of the complicated 2016 presidential dynamics that the Democratic Party is now facing.
Hillary Rodham Clinton is considered such a prohibitive favorite in the Democratic race — if she runs — that she has almost cleared the field of strong challengers. And that has created a vacuum on the left that many liberals, who believe the party is not being sufficiently bold or aggressive in its efforts to connect with middle-class America, are desperate to fill.

Ms. Warren has repeatedly said she is not planning to run for president. Her goal, said an aide, is to influence policy debates and negotiations on any Dodd-Frank rollbacks, and to show that the party’s base will fight to protect Wall Street regulation.

But she is also proudly claiming what Howard Dean once called “the Democratic wing of the Democratic Party” — a left-leaning constituency that many politicians are nervous to cultivate. And the affection is mutual.

The liberal group MoveOn.org is preparing to spend $1 million to persuade Ms. Warren to enter the presidential race. And more than 300 former Obama campaign staff members Friday released a letter calling on Ms. Warren to run.

more at:
http://www.nytimes.com/2014/12/14/us/pol...v=top-news&_r=0