Warren Is Running An Impressive Campaign & It's Working

To be honest, I have not made up my mind who I will vote for on March 3rd.

But I have to admit that Senator Elizabeth Warren has impressed me, and if I had to vote right now, I would choose her. I just like the campaign she is running, and evidently it's working, because she has slowly climbed in all the polls.

I like that she's not attacking her fellow Democrats. Instead, she's focusing on the issues.

And she's not just complaining about those issues (the problems facing this country), but she has given them some deep thought and come up with workable plans to solve those problems.

I'm not the only one she's impressed with her campaign. Here's what David Axelrod (chief campaign strategist and senior adviser to President Obama) had to say about it:

Elizabeth Warren is running a strategically brilliant campaign.

More than any other candidate, she has a clear, unambiguous message that is thoroughly integrated with her biography. That is essential to a successful campaign.

Her unsparing critique of corporate excess and her expansive -- and expensive -- agenda for change mirror those of the reigning left champion, Bernie Sanders, in places. But where Sanders sometimes seems like a parody of himself -- or of Larry David's parody of Sanders -- Warren seems fresher, deeper and more precise in her execution.

John Delaney, the former congressman and health tech entrepreneur, learned this when he tried to tangle with Warren over her support for Medicare for All, a plan that would abolish private insurance. 

Delaney argued that there were other, more politically feasible ways to strengthen coverage. But he delivered his point with all the charm of a corporate auditor and Warren crushed him with a killer line:

"You know, I don't understand why anybody goes to all the trouble of running for president of the United States just to talk about what we really can't do and shouldn't fight for," she said, as the crowd erupted in cheers.

The jibe, like her entire campaign, is exhilarating to Democrats who have no patience for the incrementalism that governing in a big, diverse and closely divided democracy requires. 

There is a valid argument, borne out by polling and common sense, that a proposal to abolish the private insurance that covers 180 million Americans might be too radical a change to make all at once. It also hands President Trump a huge cudgel with which to flay Democrats in a race that promises to be close.

But Warren has put critics of her grand plans on the defensive in much the same way Barack Obama put Hillary Clinton on the defensive in 2008, when she argued that Obama's plans were fantastical in the real world of Washington.

A big aspirational message is more satisfying than a cramped, political one. Warren is positioning herself as Big Change versus the status quo. Yes We Can versus No We Can't.

And for those who say that Medicare for All and some of her other positions are fraught with peril, Warren had another message:

"I get it," she said. "There is a lot at stake, and people are scared. But we can't choose a candidate we don't believe in just because we're too scared to do anything else. And we can't ask other people to vote for a candidate we don't believe in.

"Democrats win when we figure out what is right and we get out there and fight for it. I am not afraid. And for Democrats to win, you can't be afraid, either."

I don't know if Elizabeth Warren will win the nomination. Her sometimes professorial style can be off-putting and she has yet to break through with the white working class voters with whom Biden and Sanders are doing well.

Moreover, there are legitimate critiques of her policy on substantive and not just political grounds. But it is going to take more than what we saw on either stage this week to win that battle.

Warren has a theory of the case and is prosecuting it very skillfully.