MoveOn lost its first fight. The Dean campaign lost every major primary. The lesson activists took away: Try something. The media, at least, is going to cover a primary threat more than it covers a sui generis student loan bill.

Thus the Warren “presidential campaign,” a masterful branding and messaging exercise. In September 2013, the New York Times wrote an attention-getting profile of Warren’s appeal to progressives, proven by the growing crowds for organizers wise enough to book her. “Bumper stickers and T-shirts surfacing in liberal enclaves proclaim, ‘I’m from the Elizabeth Warren Wing of the Democratic Party.’ ” Jonathan Martin reported that those stickers were mass-produced by the Progressive Change Campaign Committee, which was founded in 2009 by Adam Green (a veteran of MoveOn and Democratic campaigns) and Stephanie Taylor (a veteran of the SEIU, AFL-CIO, and yes, MoveOn)…

“Hillary Clinton is going to say these things,” said former Rep. Brad Miller, a North Carolina Democrat who left his seat after a 2011 gerrymander. “Whoever our Democratic nominee is will run as an economic populist. When the pollsters and consultants come back with the numbers, they’ll tell her: Holy crap, you may not have been a populist before, but you are one now! The problem will be credibility, and whether it’s believable coming from someone who has close ties to the financial sector.”

At the conference, for most attendees, Clinton was credible enough.