2016: Elizabeth Warren: ‘No,’ I Won’t Be Running for President

After leaving some wiggle room in recent interviews, Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) seems to have closed the door on a 2016 presidential run in an interview with Fortune.

Sheila Blair, in an interview for the magazine, asked, “So are you going to run for President?”

Warren replied, “No.”

When asked what the Democratic nominee needs to do to win in 2016, Warren said, “they need to speak to America’s families about the economic crisis in this country.”

“It starts with the recognition that Washington works for the rich and powerful and not for America’s families,” she continued. “From there, it has to go into what changes we need to make, and that gets back to education, infrastructure, and research.”

Perhaps acknowledging that a non-establishment GOP nominee will be a more appealing general election candidate than a moderate nominee, Warren said that a GOP candidate “might” also echo the same themes. But she said that, “for both sides, the proof will be in the pudding.”

“Who is willing to stand up for Wall Street accountability? Who is willing to take on the powerful by closing tax loopholes so that we have the money to invest in education, infrastructure, and research,” she added. “Who’s willing to make the hard choices? The candidates need to say something concrete. This can’t be a silent game, with a lot of nice platitudes. There needs to be something real.”

Long before the mainstream press started to gush over Warren’s “populism,” former Alaska Governor Sarah Palin, in a landmark speech in Indianola, Iowa during the 2012 election cycle, blasted the bipartisan permanent political class that extracts wealth from working Americans. After her speech that appealed to the increasing number of Americans who are identifying as independents, more politicians started to take on crony capitalism and the bipartisan permanent political class that favors bills like comprehensive amnesty legislation.

Though Warren firmly ruled out a presidential run in the Fortune interview, a MoveOn petition urging her to run has received more than 200,000 signatures from left-wing activists who do not trust Hillary Clinton on crony capitalism and financial issues. MoveOn and Ready for Warren have launched campaigns to change Warren’s mind on a 2016 run. Warren most recently demonstrated her  clout with progressive Democrats when investment banker Antonio Weiss asked the White House not to renominate him for a top Treasury Department post over the weekend after Warren and other left-wing Democrats campaigned against him.