And back on the plane in the hours following the January 2020 Iowa Caucus, hurtling into New Hampshire and toward the next primary — down but not yet out — she knew at least one explanation for why. Deepa Shivaram, NBC’s Warren embed, brought up the “women win” messaging and the fact that, at least in this Iowa Democratic Caucus … they didn’t. Where did that message come from, Deepa asked,and why was it important to speak to gender now?

“I’m responding to what people wanna hear,” Warren told us plainly, with a characteristically biting edge in her voice. She spoke sometimes as if all the annoyance and frustration she had about the political system simmered right on the edge of her words, teeming on the top of her teeth, threatening to spill over.

We’d talked about the dynamics of Iowa, her competitors and the pressure she put on herself not “to screw this up.” But here and now she offered her plainest view of the landscape yet: “Everyone comes up to me and says, ‘I would vote for you, if you had a penis.’”