Warren took on President Obama and her party’s leadership, and appeared to inspire an uprising in the House.
The fight earned her comparisons to Texas firebrand Republican Sen. Ted Cruz, another relative newcomer to the Senate who has shown outsized clout in his party.

Warren lost the battle, but if  she continues to fight hard she may be in a battle with Sen. Charles Schumer (D-N.Y.), the third-ranking member of the Democratic leadership who represents New York’s powerful financial industry.

Peter Ubertaccio, a political science professor at Stonehill College in Massachusetts, sais, “If she’s able to succeed at the expense of her own leadership team — the team that she’s on — it will have the practical impact of moving the center of power away from folks like Schumer and toward her,” he said. “That’s pretty significant for a freshman senator that’s been brought into the leadership.

It could also reverberate in the 2016 presidential race, which liberal Democrats are dying for Warren to enter as a rival to former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.

Warren is now a national figure in a tradition of influential Massachusetts politicians who have run for president such as former Sen. Ted Kennedy (D), former Gov. Michael Dukakis (D), former Gov. Mitt Romney (R), former Sen. John Kerry (D) and former Sen. Paul Tsongas (D).

Warren’s efforts also carried risks, and rubbed some Democrats the wrong way. Warren exhorted fellow Democrats to defeat the spending bill because it repealed a key provision of the 2010 Dodd-Frank Wall Street reform law. She lost, but the battle was important.

House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi’s (D-Calif.) position appeared to harden .  She harshly criticized the White House.

Sen. Warren has recognized an opportunity to be the voice of the progressive side of the Democratic coalition and she’s taken full advantage.

Ending ‘too big to fail’ is far from over. Before Congress starts handing out Christmas presents to the megabanks and Wall Street, beware.