“There’s nothing to handle. It is what it is. I’m also 5 foot 8,’’ she said, holding her gaze on the questioner. “Yeah, I’m a Harvard professor. But I wasn’t born at Harvard. I came up scrappy. I came up the hard way.’’
“I scratched it out,’’ she added, leaking just a hint of her Oklahoma accent. “I took care of myself. I took care of my family.’’
Warren is the would-be Senate candidate who has yet to declare her intentions, but has made enough moves in the race that nearly everyone who is watching closely sees her as the biggest name in a Democratic field attempting to defeat Republican Scott Brown next year.
In an interview yesterday, the Harvard Law School professor did nothing to dispel the assumption that she plans to run, answering detailed questions about the economic issues she would emphasize in her campaign and the patchwork details of her personal story.
Warren, 62, has returned to Massachusetts after a stint in Washington where she led a panel that monitored the banking bailout and then established the new federal Consumer Financial Protection Bureau at President Obama’s behest. Both jobs put her at odds with Republicans who said she was too hostile toward business to effectively lead the agency and ultimately, Obama declined to nominate her.
She now talks as someone who has been to Washington, seen its dysfunction firsthand, and come away wanting to reform it. While Brown emphasizes crossing the aisle to find compromise, she talks about fighting. And she does it without apology.
“There are some things worth fighting for and right now it’s about fighting for the middle class,’’ she said more than once.
“It’s about being willing to take a good idea and fight for it,’’ she said later. “It’s being willing to throw your body in front of a bus to block bad ideas.’’
Democratic leaders in Massachusetts and Washington are convinced the Oklahoma native is the best chance the party has to recapture Edward M. Kennedy’s Senate seat. She has spent the last month speaking with small invitation-only groups of Democrats, generating excitement within the party’s rank-and-file.
