The political journey of Elizabeth Warren

When she was a young law professor, Elizabeth Warren set out to discover why people go bankrupt. She traveled to federal courtrooms across the country and listened to the stories of people in financial distress. Many were middle class, she found, but had fallen on hard times after becoming sick, losing their jobs or getting divorced. The realization that so many Americans were one bad break away from bankruptcy was the beginning of a fourdecade career that has taken Warren from the lecture halls of Harvard to the halls of Congress. As a consumer advocate, a senator from Massachusetts, and now a Democratic presidential candidate, Warren has always preached a message of economic fairness and championed regulations on credit card companies and big banks. “I got a plan” has become a core message of her presidential campaign, but critics say her plans are unrealistic in an era of political gridlock. Subscribe to The Washington Post on YouTube