The Atlantic

Elizabeth Warren’s Early Stroke of Genius

The senator from Massachusetts announced she was running for president on New Year’s Eve—and then had the field largely to herself.
Source: Brian Snyder / Reuters

CLAREMONT, N.H.—Elizabeth Warren wants the look on her face to be funny. It’s somewhere between stern and confused and disappointed, complete with fists briefly on her hips, like she’s playing a mom in a commercial who just found an adorable kid making a mess on the floor.

That’s how the senator from Massachusetts responds late Friday when I ask her what she thinks will happen if the rest of the Democratic primary field doesn’t follow her lead and put talking about the economy at the center of their campaigns.

“I don’t know how anyone could not talk about the economy—and corruption!—and diagnose what’s wrong in America today. I just don’t know how they could do it,” she said, then added with a little snark creeping in to her voice, “Good luck …”

[Read: Elizabeth Warren doesn’t want to be Hillary 2.0]

The long photo line was done, and she was still standing on the small platform where she’d just done an hour-long town hall in

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