Warren is not viable...and I love her as a candidate. That's where the Democrats & the GOP are different....and where you are thinking like a Republican. Though they have their own far left factions & ideologies, the Demcrats are a far more pragmatic party with far fewer ideologues than the Republicans....which is why they can win national elections and the Republicans no longer can. There are millions of Democrats out there like me who don't even like Hillary Clinton....but are not willing to cut off their nose to spite their face and hand the presidency to a bat-shit crazy Republican presidential candidate. So we will hold our nose and vote for her. As long as she is considered to be the Democratic candidate with by far the best chance of being elected, no serious Democrat is going to challenge her.
The Republicans simply don't think like this....at least enough of them don't. The Democrats eventually learned their lesson...and Bill Clinton was the person who saved them. The Democratic Party had veered dangerously far to the left in the 1980s and was getting close to being in the shape that the GOP is in today....though I don't think they ever got as far left as the GOP is right today, because there were always moderates, even moderate/rights, in the Democratic Party even then....unlike today's GOP, which has totally purged almost all moderates from the party. Susan Collins is about all that is left, now that Olympia Snow finally got disgusted and retired.
The 1980 election is a good example of where the Democrats were then that could be compared to where the GOP is now....though it is an imperfect comparison. The liberal wing of the Democrats talked Ted Kennedy into challenging President Carter in the primaries. To many people's surprise, Carter...even though his presidency had been a disaster...had very little trouble dispatching Kennedy in the primaries. Still, Carter was damaged by Democratic infighting and lost to Reagan (which he probably would have done anyway). It was a lesson learned by the Democrats, though....and opened the door 12 years later (after two more liberal debacles in 1984 & 1988) for Clinton to pull the party back toward the center and make it a very viable "center-left" party.
The Republicans had not learned their lesson in 1992, when Pat Buchanan (along with Ross Perot, of course) effectively crippled George H W Bush and allowed Clinton & the Democrats to win the presidency with less than 50% of the popular vote. However, unlike the Democrats, the Republicans didn't learn their lesson....and have just moved ever farther to the right, becoming more unelectable in national elections every four years. Only Bill Clinton's personal scandal, a poor campaign by Al Gore, Ralph Nader & a completely crooked electoral situation in Florida where Bush's own campaign manager was able to illegally purge 57,000 voters from the voter registration rolls allowed the Republicans to steal the presidency in 2000....then edge out a narrow win in 2004 with one of the dirtiest campaigns in the nation's history....after the Democrats had nominated the wrong candidate to oppose him.
In the 11 years since the 2004 election, though, the Republican Party has seemingly been on a suicide mission as a party that can compete at the national level....as the far right radicals have taken a stronger & stronger stranglehold on the party. Maybe the GOP can find a way to survive, but I doubt it. Where is their "Bill Clinton"? ....because that's what the GOP is going to need to take back its party from the far right, and I just don't see him out there anywhere.
