Wall Street foe Liz Warren rises in DC

Warren this week also got a rock star's welcome at the Democracy Alliance meeting in Washington, a gathering of wealthy liberal donors who greeted the senator with cheers of "Run, Liz, run!," a reference to a 2016 presidential campaign that Warren has (mostly) said she will not engage in.

The Warren adulation has important ramifications heading into the next Congress and the 2016 campaign cycle. It means the main lesson Democrats took away from 2014 was that they failed to fire up the progressive base with a stronger message on the economy, immigration reform, Wall Street regulation and other issues that tend to energize the left.

And that makes it even less likely that the Senate Democratic leadership will want to give ground to more moderate members of the caucus who want to cut deals with Republicans on deficit reduction, trade, taxation or other issues.

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The early plan from Democrats instead seems to be to double down on strong opposition to the Republican agenda and begin to build back the "Obama coalition" of younger and more diverse voters for the 2016 races they hope will give them the Senate back while retaining the White House.

Warren is already flexing her muscles and showing how she conceives of her role as power-player in the Democratic Party.

A senior aide to Warren this week told me the senator plans to oppose President Barack Obama's nomination of Antonio Weiss, a Wall Street investment banker, to be Treasury undersecretary for domestic finance. It's not clear if Warren's opposition will be enough to bring along other Democrats and kill Weiss' nomination through a filibuster in the next Congress.

But it does show that anything that seems even remotely favorable to the banking industry is going to have a tough time moving forward in the 114th Congress. Looking for Democrats to concede any ground on Dodd-Frank reforms that might benefit smaller financial institutions? Don't bank on it.

Weiss, head of global investment banking at Lazard, is widely respected on Wall Street. But he advised on Burger King's acquisition of Canadian doughnut chain Tim Hortons, a so-called "tax inversion deal." But that's not the only thing driving Warren's opposition to him.

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Wall Street foe Liz Warren rises in DC