Elizabeth Warren Had Charisma, and Then She Ran for President

Charisma comes from the Greek word for “divine gift,” and back in 2015, political commentators thought Elizabeth Warren had a lot of it. Vox called the senator from Massachusetts “a more charismatic campaigner than [Hillary] Clinton.” Roll Call said Clinton couldn’t “match Warren’s charisma, intensity or passion.” The polling firm Rasmussen called Warren “Bernie Sanders with charisma.”

That was then. Now that Warren is running for president, many journalists have decided the charisma is gone. An article last month in The Week noted that Warren “doesn’t do uplift, which is what people mean when they grumble about her lack of ‘charisma’ and ‘energy.’” In a recent story about Warren’s fundraising trouble, The New York that she was suffering because Democrats’ “longstanding fascination with youthful charisma—along with its current, Trump-driven fixation on electability—can outweigh qualities like experience or policy expertise.”