Sen. Elizabeth Warren poses for a photo during a campaign stop in Fairfield, Iowa, May 26, 2019. (Rachel Mummey/Reuters)

You don’t have to portray Elizabeth Warren as the second coming of Frederick Douglass to make the reasonable point that her “selfie strategy” has been working out pretty well for her.

A Warren campaign aide tells me that the candidate has taken nearly 60,000 selfies (yes, I know many of the photos are not all technically selfies) since the campaign began, including more than 8,000 in Iowa alone. That Iowa figure translates to about 5 percent of all Democrats who participated in the 2016 caucuses.


Warren is 70 years old but looks 60. The “selfies,” along with her penchant for jogging toward the stage at campaign events, help give her a youthful image compared with Joe Biden, who is 76 but looks 80, and Bernie Sanders, who is 78 but looks 90.

The photos also help combat the perception that the former professor has a cold, professorial demeanor.

And when it comes time to vote, a lot of Warren supporters are going to change their profile pictures on social media to their “selfies” with Warren, and that seems likely to be a particularly valuable form of advertising.