Nice little upbeat piece from Jill Lawrence at the Atlantic about Elizabeth Warren’s first day on the campaign trail:
SPRINGFIELD, Mass. — “Could we get a picture? Let’s do a picture! I love doing pictures!” Elizabeth Warren exclaimed. It was Day One of her U.S. Senate campaign and about Minute Five of her visit to The Student Prince, a German bierhaus bedecked with thousands of beer mugs. And to my surprise, the bespectacled Harvard professor seemed in her element…
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[S]he will be competitive in ways that people may not expect. First, Warren seems to enjoy campaigning and demonstrates as much warmth and “relatability” as any seasoned pro on the trail. Hardly anyone went untouched of the dozens waiting to greet her at The Student Prince, the fifth and last stop of her announcement tour. I mean that literally — she dispensed hugs and arm-pats to nearly everyone, clasped many hands with both of hers, and seems to have perfected the art of intense eye-contact, the kind that makes people think they are the only person in the room.
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Few can match Brown’s gripping biography, from his upbringing amid alcoholism, poverty and domestic violence, to his education at Tufts and Boston College law school, to his careers in modeling, the military and politics. Yet Warren, a native of Oklahoma, also has a compelling tale that she often telescopes into a few vivid sentences. After her father had a heart attack, she says, her family existed on “the ragged edge” of the middle class. “We lost our car. We almost lost a house,” she told one man at The Student Prince. She later told reporters that she was babysitting by age 9, waiting tables at 13, married at 19, a mother and elementary school teacher at 22.
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As for Republicans who dismiss her as a liberal academic, “I grew up hanging on to the edge of the middle class by my fingernails,” Warren said. “All I can say is I’ve been there. I’ve lived this. My family lived one pink slip, one bad diagnosis away from falling off the economic cliff. Yeah, I’ve got a fancy job at Harvard and I’ve gotta tell you, I’m proud of that job. I worked hard to get there. I wasn’t born at Harvard. I was born to a family that had to work for everything it’s got.”
For those aren’t familiar with the Commonwealth, “America’s first Springfield” is one of those battered industrial towns that’s never fully recovered from the original 1950s “offshoring” of manufacturing jobs to the low-wage Southern States. If Warren can connect with Springfield, the professional hand-wringers can stop worrying about the ‘too elitist’ tag.