(CNN) Sen. Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts has no intention of being "Hillary'd" in the 2020 Democratic presidential primary.

That was the phrase, used as shorthand by a student asking about sexist attacks during a CNN town hall Monday night, that prompted Warren to recall her successful 2012 campaign to unseat Republican Sen. Scott Brown.

It was a campaign, Warren said, that almost never happened. Democrats were telling her she ought to run, that she'd make a great senator. But there was a catch: Most of them were confident Warren would lose, and didn't mind telling her.

"People said to me, you're going to lose because Massachusetts in 2011, according to conventional wisdom, was not ready to have a woman senator or governor. We never had and people said it's just not going to happen, not at least for another generation," she said.

"I heard that," Warren remembered on Monday, "as 'Get in this race, right now.' Which is what I did."

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