It’s early, but this much is true: Elizabeth Warren is running the most impressive presidential campaign in ages, certainly the most impressive campaign within my lifetime.
I don’t mean that the Massachusetts senator is a better speaker than anyone who has ever run, nor a more strident revolutionary, nor as charismatic a shaper of her public image. It’s not even that she has better ideas than her opponents, though on a range of issues she certainly does.
I’m impressed instead by something more simple and elemental: Warren actually has ideas. She has grand, detailed and daring ideas, and through these ideas she is single-handedly elevating the already endless slog of the 2020 presidential campaign into something weightier and more interesting than what it might otherwise have been: a frivolous contest about who hates Donald Trump most.
Warren’s approach is ambitious and unconventional. She is betting on depth in a shallow, tweet-driven world. By offering so much honest detail so early, she risks turning off key constituencies, alienating donors and muddying the gauzy visionary branding that is the fuel for so much early horse-race coverage. It’s worth noting that it took Warren months of campaigning and reams of policy proposals to earn her a spot on the cover of
Time Magazine. Meanwhile, because they match the culture’s
Aaron Sorkinian picture of what a smart progressive looks like,
Beto and
Buttigieg — whose
policy depth can be measured in tossed-off paragraphs — are awarded fawning coverage just for showing up male.
Yet, deliciously, Warren’s substantive approach is yielding results. Her plans are so voluminous that they’ve
become their own meme.
She’s been rising like a rocket in the polls, and is finally earning the kind of media coverage that was initially bestowed on many less-deserving men in the race. Warren’s policy ideas are now even beginning to create their own political weather. Following her early,
bold call to break up big technology companies, the Justice Department and the Federal Trade Commission are
dividing up responsibilities on policing tech giants, and lawmakers in the House are planning a sweeping inquiry into tech dominance. Warren’s Democratic opponents are now rushing to respond with their own deep policy ideas; Joe Biden’s staff seems to be pulling all-nighters,
cutting and pasting from whatever looks good, to match Warren’s policy shop.