What Elizabeth Warren said Saturday at the New Hampshire Democratic state convention might have sounded faintly familiar. “I am not afraid,” she declared. “And for Democrats to win, you can’t be afraid either.”

Consciously or not, Warren was echoing one of the most important lines of Barack Obama’s primary campaign against Hillary Clinton. “If we are really serious about winning this election, Democrats,” Obama declared at the Iowa Democratic Party’s Jefferson-Jackson Dinner on November 10, 2007, “we can’t live in fear of losing it.” That line became part of the message that won Obama the Iowa caucuses, and the Democratic nomination. ...
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...when Obama took the stage at the Jefferson-Jackson dinner, he exploited a sense among Iowa Democrats that Clinton lacked political courage, and that a vote for her would reflect their own lack of courage, too. “Not answering questions ’cause we are afraid our answers won’t be popular just won’t do,” he told the crowd. “Triangulating and poll-driven positions because we’re worried about what Mitt [Romney] or Rudy [Giuliani] might say about us just won’t do. If we are really serious about winning this election, Democrats, we can’t live in fear of losing it.”
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There are obvious differences between Warren now and Obama then. Obama was more frequently attacked for his lack of experience; Warren is more often criticized for being ideologically extreme. Obama also enjoyed a greater reservoir of potential African American support. After he won Iowa, black voters moved to him en masse, which laid the foundation for his victories in the South. If Warren wins Iowa, she’s unlikely to benefit from the same decisive shift.
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