WASHINGTON _ Her fierce indictments of Wall Street electrify Democrats across the country. Her unapologetically progressive brand and fiery style match the mood of her party's liberal base. She is locking down top political talent and has the beginnings of a formidable campaign organization.
But according to interviews with two dozen senior Democratic strategists, activists and early-voting-state officials, Elizabeth Warren still faces one major challenge: convincing Democrats that she can defeat President Donald Trump.
"She is classified as a far-left liberal," said South Carolina state Sen. Marlon Kimpson, who said he does not share that view. "And again, we're looking for someone who has a strategy for the Electoral College board. And it just seems that she has some work to do in that area."
The question of which candidate is best-positioned to beat Trump is, according to polls, the defining issue of the Democratic presidential primary, and candidates of every ideological stripe will have to make their electability cases.
Yet the issue is particularly charged for Warren because voters have already seen her attempt to go head-to-head with Trump _ and come out diminished, in the eyes of her critics.
Trump has an uncanny ability to brand rivals with cutting nicknames, and his arsenal includes mocking references to Warren as "Pocahontas," taunting her longtime claims of Native American heritage. So the senator released results of a DNA test last fall in an effort to shut down Trump's line of attack.
Instead, the episode offered a road map for how Trump would define Warren if she wins her party's nomination. The image still unsettles some Democrats months later.
"In watching the scenario where Trump has called her 'Pocahontas,' then her efforts to react to that, to prove something, I don't think it went over well," said Iowa state Sen. Liz Mathis.
"Now, she has apologized, although I know that he will pick on that like a scab," she continued. "He's going to go after that if she becomes the front-runner. He's going to go after that and ridicule her. While that is not fair and it seems like it's bullying, it's a reality: when people go up against him, that he's just going to be mean."
Warren indeed apologized after Native Americans were offended by the test and her past claims of Native American identity _ she lacks tribal citizenship _ and many Democrats expect the substance of the matter to blow over, especially given Trump's propensity for attacking Warren in racially charged terms, which can spur a circling-the-wagons effect.
But the subject has periodically resurfaced through new reporting, prompting some Democrats to have uneasy flashbacks to the sustained scrutiny of Hillary Clinton's email practices in 2016, another issue that Democrats dismissed but that Trump effectively exploited.
In interviews, Democrats said none of Warren's challenges are insurmountable. Other candidates could face similar struggles or worse the moment Trump turns his attention on them, perhaps closer to the time voters head to the polls.
And in an election cycle in which Trump intends to cast Democrats as radicals, Warren is not the field's most far-left candidate on economic matters _ democratic socialist Bernie Sanders takes that mantle. Charges from Trump and Republicans that Democrats are socialists even gave Warren an opportunity to reiterate her identity as a capitalist.
After the upheaval of the last presidential election, many Democrats are also adamant that no one can predict electability against Trump.
"The biggest worry with the Native American issue is people who psych themselves out, think Trump's going to attack her in the general, so we take our Michael Jordan off the field," acknowledged Adam Green, the co-founder of the Progressive Change Campaign Committee, a liberal group that has endorsed Warren. "What those people don't realize is Trump will attack every Democrat on something."
