Fair or not, and regardless of her many undoubted talents, Hillary Clinton always came across to me as an elementary school teacher telling me to eat my vegetables. There was an air of hauteur and entitlement about her that I didn’t really appreciate. Obviously, a lot of other people felt the same way.
In spite of their surface similarities, I don’t get the same feeling from Warren. I think her issues relating to people revolve around her ability to read the room and find the right words to fire up her audience. In that respect, she’s the opposite of Trump.
Warren has everything else she needs to be a successful presidential candidate. She knows policy inside and out; she has a compelling biography, if she can figure out how to feature it; she appears to be able to integrate both class and identity concerns in a single package; and I think she passes the Putin’s dog test. She is a capitalist reformer, not a socialist wannabe, which is another plus.
Can she find her voice during the campaign, or will she just look like a white bread old lady next to the other candidates? I make no predictions. That’s the point of campaigns.