‘I Have a Plan For That.’ Elizabeth Warren Is Betting That Americans Are Ready for Her Big Ideas

Voters encountering Elizabeth Warren on the presidential campaign trail these days often seem surprised. After a packed gathering at an elementary school in Concord, N.H., in April, a 40-something woman told me she had expected Warren to be more like Hillary Clinton but found them miles apart.

A college student who caught Warren’s speech in Hanover said he was perplexed to learn that a woman once described by the U.S. Chamber of Commerce’s political director as a “threat to free enterprise” in fact believes in entrepreneurship and markets. And at an event in a Portsmouth high school cafeteria, a retired teacher told me he’d heard Warren was a “Ted Cruz–like partisan” but instead found her charming. “She seems like a real doll,” he shrugged. “Can I say that?”

Read the full TIME cover story here.