
David Scharfenberg’s Ideas piece on Elizabeth Warren’s electability fails to consider that many Americans choose among candidates based on perceptions about their personality rather than on the details of their policies. Senator Warren’s advantages against Donald Trump aren’t just her superior policy positions and their appeal to swing voters. They are also her personal history and her approach to public service. Warren has a career-long record of writing about and advocating for struggling families. And she has avoided, in her public life, the kind of scandals that seem to envelop Trump with each passing day. Ultimately, we ought to be confident that many voters will choose Warren’s demonstrated empathy, her middle-class values, and her rectitude over the president’s self-aggrandizement and hypocritical populist bluster.