The Massachusetts senator did not say she was going to run for president on Saturday but all the signs suggest that she will

Speaking at a town hall event in Boston on a cold and rainy Saturday morning weeks before the midterm elections, Elizabeth Warren didn’t mention her Republican opponent until her time on stage was nearly over. Even then, she did not mention him by name.

'He'll be re-elected': Trump and allies tout the sweet smell of 2020 success Read more

The Senate race in this bluest of blue states feels like a foregone conclusion. Warren leads Geoff Diehl by between 25 and 30 points. On Saturday, the incumbent took aim at the bigger picture: the need for Democrats across the country to defeat Republicans on 6 November and combat Donald Trump’s agenda, boost fights for affordable healthcare and housing and help overcome racial and economic inequalities.

“I am so excited about 6 November coming, the things we can do if we take back the majority in the House and the Senate,” said Warren, 69. “I get it, we won’t have the White House, but to have the House and the Senate is to make a downpayment. It is to begin to pass the laws we need.”

If it felt like Warren was running for the White House, it’s because she might be.

At a town hall like this one, in Holyoke two weeks ago, Warren gave the strongest indication yet she is seriously considering a 2020 run. She would, she said, “take a hard look at running for president” after the midterm vote.

In Warren, the Democrats have a potential candidate willing to go toe-to-toe with a president who spews insults at his enemies multiple times a day. She is not a politician to ignore the president’s words or actions, but one who responds and taps into the anger many liberals feel. She says Democrats are in a “fight” against Republicans and those who want to make the rich richer – a term she uses frequently. In a party that has run centrists in past elections, she is pushing the mainstream to a place further left and more confrontational.

On Saturday, one young man started asking a question by contrasting the tendency of Trump and the Republicans to “bring out the worst” in their supporters with how Democrats often “seem hampered by a need to be polite, to be civil, to not offend”.

“Um … I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Warren interrupted, to laughter and applause.

“I get it,” she said. “There’s a lot to blame our side for in not having been stronger, in not having stood up, in not having spoken up. But the way I see it, those days are in the rearview mirror. There is no more time for silence in this country now.”

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Elizabeth Warren addresses a town hall meeting in Roxbury, Massachusetts. Photograph: Joseph Prezioso/AFP/Getty Images

Warren has been the target of scorn from the president and other Republicans. Trump has called the senator “Pocahontas” for years, drawing on controversy over her claims of Native American ancestry.

The latest insult came from the Boston-native and White House chief of staff, John Kelly, who called Warren an “impolite arrogant woman” in an email obtained by Buzzfeed this week.

Warren has turned insults like that into rallying cries.

“This is why I ran for Senate,” she said on Saturday, after talking about a bill she wrote aimed at reducing the cost of hearing aids. “This is why I fight. This is why I am impolite. This is why I persist.”

“Persistance” has been rallying cry for the senator and for feminists since February 2017, when Warren spoke against the confirmation of Jeff Sessions as attorney general and Republicans voted to silence her.

Majority leader Mitch McConnell said then: “Senator Warren was given a lengthy speech. She had appeared to violate the rule. She was warned. She was given an explanation. Nevertheless, she persisted.”

If Warren is not running for president, she is putting on a pretty convincing bluff.

According to the Boston Globe, she is the third-largest spender on digital ads this year, behind only Trump and the Texas Democrat Beto O’Rourke. According to research by the paper and the Center for Responsive Politics, many of those ads are aimed at voters outside Massachusetts. One of the key targets is Oklahoma, the staunchly Republican state where Warren is from. She has spent at least $2.4m on ads that have reached up to 10m people. She has also taken her show on the road, appearing in Nevada, Wisconsin, Oklahoma and Utah.

Elizabeth Warren will 'take hard look at running for president' in 2020 Read more

Warren’s website sells “Persist” T-shirts in English and Spanish, in the colors of the pride flag or branded with the name of any of the 50 states, Puerto Rico or Washington DC. There are “purr-sist” collars for cats. On Friday, the senator announced that “Impolite arrogant woman” T-shirts and totes were now available.

But while Warren remains popular as a senator, there are signs Massachusetts voters could feel different about her running for president. In a poll by Suffolk University and the Boston Globe, 58% of respondents said they did not think Warren should try for the Oval Office.

Her Republican opponent, Diehl, has tried to use a potential run as a point to rally voters, saying Warren is not committed to Massachusetts.

The state, he repeatedly says, “deserves a full-time senator”. When Warren bought ads in Oklahoma, Diehl said: “Wrong state, senator … This is just more evidence that Elizabeth Warren is not interested in representing us in Washington. She is more focused on her presidential ambitions.”

Facebook Twitter Pinterest ‘I love her ability to grapple with the big boys.’ Photograph: UPI/Barcroft Images

Diehl, a co-chair of Trump’s Massachusetts campaign in 2016, is calling for Warren to drop out of the race. He remains well behind in the polls but he has said a “Kavanaugh bump” could propel him among conservatives energized by the supreme court hearings.

At Warren’s town hall on Saturday, there seemed to be support for a presidential run.

“Will she be able to win? Maybe. Probably a bit better than Hillary,” said Anthony McPherson, a 40-year-old finance manager from Mattapan. “If she keeps her original ideology, she can run – and I would support her in her run for the presidency.”

Maura Twomey, 62, was enthusiastic about the possibility of Warren versus Trump.

“I would totally support it,” she said. “I think we need to focus on midterm elections right now, but I think she has the stature, the energy and the intellect to carry us a long way.

“I love her persistence. But mostly I love her honest intellect, her ability to grapple with the big boys.”