Are you suffering from Elizabeth Warren Denial Syndrome?
Elizabeth Warren did not die in a tragic accident yesterday. But judging by the reactions of America’s journalists and academics, you would be forgiven for thinking she had. Instead, she suspended her presidential campaign after a string of self-inflicted, humiliating failures. Yet huge swathes of the overeducated US intelligentsia responded the news as though their entire worldview had been shattered. I don’t see much of a difference in the reactions of Warren’s elite opinion-maker supporters to her campaign suspension and the way Kobe Bryant’s death in a helicopter crash was processed by NBA fans: raw trauma and disbelief, with some anger and desperation mixed in.