Conventional wisdom dictates that Elizabeth Warren cannot beat Rick Scott (R-MA). Conventional wisdom is wrong. Conventional wisdom also dictated that Jeff Merkley (D-OR) could not beat incumbent Gordon Smith. We demonstrated that Gordon Smith,Scott Brown, was a false moderate. Smith was moderate whenever we didn’t need him. If the issue was decided, one way or the other, and his vote did not matter, he voted with Democrats. Whenever it mattered, he always lined up and goose-stepped with the Republican regime. If MA progressives become energized for Warren, as we did for Merkley, she can win.

On Thursday, Elizabeth Warren announced that she’s starting an exploratory committee for a potential U.S. Senate run in Massachusetts. The news doesn’t come as much of a surprise. The Harvard Law professor, who recently stepped down from the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau she originated, has been the subject of Senatorial speculation for months, if not longer. She recently hinted of her candidacy on a progressive Massachusetts blog and set off on a listening tour around the Bay State this week.

Some have called the move a trap. Her would-be Republican opponent’s popularity is pretty remarkable, even in polls run by Democrats. In the seat long held by Democratic lion Ted Kennedy, Sen. Scott Brown has played the Massachusetts version of a conservative fairly well, bucking his party just enough to come off as independent minded. And her Democratic challengers hardly make her a slam dunk: While she gets the best margin in a head-to-head poll pitting Democrats against Brown, her hardly impressive 28 percent (compared with Brown’s 53 percent) is not that much higher than City Year co-founder Alan Khazei’s 24 percent or Newton Mayor Setti Warren’s 21 percent.

But though it’s hardly guaranteed she will win the Democratic nomination—much less beat Brown—I think she stands a pretty good chance. Warren has become a darling of the left, so much so that they nearly made her appointment to head the agency she dreamed up a litmus test for President Obama’s progressive bona fides.

Ironically, Warren has something Brown now doesn’t, at least to the same extent: Passion from her followers…