Was Warren the strongest potential Democrat on par with Biden this year?

[Adam Griffin]

In the primary? Absolutely. She would have carried virtually every Sanders supporter (minus the handful of Paultards that fetishize the "honest angry grandpa" shtick) and she would have pulled the necessary 5-10% of primary voters who are female and who voted for Clinton over Sanders literally only because they wanted to see a woman in the White House. The difference between Clinton winning and losing the primary was in fact just that.

In the general? Who's to say. Warren has this odd appeal among people who usually despise Generic Democrat. She's folksy. She emphasizes working-class economics. In focus groups among independents and Republicans in the run-up to the primaries, she performed better than anybody else tested (Democrat or Republican). Against a scam artist like Trump, I think she would have picked up at least one person from this kind of category for every one person she'd lose out of the "Coalition of the Ascendant" suburban upper-middle class white college graduate who's expecting a tax cut from Clinton crowd.

[Adam Griffin]

If Republican 'base theory', 'reaching out to the right' is supposedly valid, why not Democratic 'base theory', 'reaching out to the left'. Obama won his reelection because his coalition was larger, even with a handicap of lower turnout vs. '08.

Turnout wasn't actually lower than 2008 where it mattered. With the exception of OH/PA, every swing state had more voters cast ballots in 2012 than in 2008.