Elizabeth Warren moves closer to Senate bid

Harvard Law professor Elizabeth Warren reached out to liberal voters on an influential Massachusetts blog today, telling the progressive community she'll spend her immediate future listening to Bay State voters before deciding whether to run for Senate.

Warren, who helped President Obama set up the new Consumer Financial Protection Bureau as part of the president's package of Wall Street reforms, has garnered a strong following among liberals. After Mr. Obama nominated former Ohio Attorney General Richard Cordray to run the bureau, liberals ratcheted up calls for her to run in the 2012 race against Republican Sen. Scott Brown.

On the blog Blue Mass Group today, Warren asked to hear from voters about how to fix the economy and the nation's political system.

"I spent years working against special interests and have the battle scars to show it - and I have no intention of stopping now," she wrote. "It is time for me to think hard about what role I can play next to help rebuild a middle class that has been hacked at, chipped at, and pulled at for more than a generation--and that that is under greater strain every day."

The top comment on the blog post asks Warren when she'll be announcing her candidacy, to which she responded, "Now that I am back home, I really want to travel through the state and hear more from all kinds of people, before I make a decision."

As Warren considers a bid, she's receiving assistance from two prominent state Democratic operatives, the Boston Globe reports: Doug Rubin, the former campaign manager for Massachusetts Gov. Deval Patrick, as well as Kyle Sullivan, Patrick's former communications director.

Seven Democrats have already declared they're running against Brown, who won the seat previously held by the late Sen. Ted Kennedy in a 2010 special election. Some liberals, however, see Warren as the best choice to go head-to-head against Brown. Over 47,000 people have joined a campaign to draft Warren into the race, spearheaded by the grassroots group Progressive Change Campaign Committee. The group has raised over $45,000 to support her bid.

"I think she'd be far and away the best candidate to take down Scott Brown," Michael Wayshak, a Sharon, Massachusetts resident who joined the PCCC effort, said in a statement. "She is brilliant and she makes complex subjects understandable to everyday people. She would be great."

While Warren already has a strong liberal following, she has no experience in elected politics.