The most powerful Democrat in America

Warren’s great challenge is to counter that dismissal by showing that her ideas do indeed have appeal outside the hard-shell Democratic Party base. They do, potentially—a number of polls have shown that Americans, including many in the center and even some on the right, have negative views of Wall Street and would back tighter regulation. She can speak to goo-goo eyed crowds in Boston and New York and San Francisco and Los Angeles, and while she’ll wow the already converted and rake in the money, she won’t be changing anything. But if she can take her message to Des Moines and Louisville and Columbus and Jacksonville and demonstrate that audiences are receptive there, then she’ll break out of the box the media wants to assign her. And if she can do that, she’ll become a figure of un-ignorable influence, and she’ll start making the likes of Clinton really pay attention.

But Clinton should be paying attention anyway. The feeling I sense right now about Clinton is: not very much real excitement, and just the slightest bit of resentment at her inevitability. She seems a little remote. She comments, sometimes, on issues that arise, but it always seems to take her a little longer than it ought to. She has a Twitter feed, but she tweets about once a week, and it’s always a total snooze. Why shouldn’t she—who needs to find ways to make people forget she’s nearly 70—use Twitter to comment on the news, and say some interesting and edgy things?