I know there’s already been a lot written about Bernie Sanders’ image as an old, angry socialist, but I think there’s more to be said about the ways in which a candidate’s image or brand, rather than their policies, influences the way voters determine who to support. More specifically, I’d like to offer a few thoughts on how Yale students approach candidate branding in the Democratic primaries.

Despite a reluctance to admit they’re really like everyone else, Yale students are just as susceptible to fancy rhetoric and affect as the average Joe. Eloquent articulation of candidate preferences doesn’t render one resistant to emotional appeals, unfortunately. And, in this particular instance, I think Yale students can be seen as generally representative of a larger group of affluent, well-educated liberals (i.e. the infamous “coastal elite”).

First, we have to acknowledge that most Yale students, myself included, are not policy wonks. Although many of us possess a rudimentary understanding of economics (yay, ECON 110), few could provide detailed critiques of labor, healthcare, or tax policies. This isn’t a serious problem per se. A comprehensive understanding of policy shouldn’t be considered a prerequisite for holding political opinions. After all, it’s not even a prerequisite for having well-thought out beliefs. It does become an issue, however, when we consider how the current Democratic candidates are perceived.

According to a YDN survey released back in September, Elizabeth Warren is Yale’s Democratic candidate of choice, with 33 percent of respondents favoring her. Obviously, the reasons why she has so much support are many and complex, but I think it’s fair to say that a not insignificant portion of it has to do with clever branding, aided by a happily complicit corporate media.

Let’s take a closer look at her campaign. Even as she’s attempted to distance herself from her background in Ivy League academia, her elite credentials remain one of her primary appeals for highly educated voters. Her 2020 campaign’s unofficial slogan is “I have a plan for that.” She has successfully co-opted a sizable segment of Bernie’s progressive energy and base while also marketing herself as a more moderate alternative to his supposed radicalism. Put simply, she’s branded herself as a more thoughtful, toned-down version of the Vermont senator.

I think Emily Tisch Sussman, Democratic strategist and progeny of billionaires, provided an apt description of this type of pro-Warren outlook earlier this year. Back in late September, during an MSNBC discussion, she said, “At this point, if you are still supporting Sanders as opposed to Warren, it’s kind of showing your sexism. Because she has more detailed plans and her plans have evolved.”

A large chunk of this statement is rooted in that quintessentially American assumption that the further left an economic policy is, the more unfeasible it must be. This is the same mentality that passively greenlights exorbitant wars in the Middle East, but pauses to ask, “How are we going to pay for it?” at every mention of social welfare expansion. In the case of Bernie v. Warren, the conclusion produced by this mentality is just as flawed and reductive: Warren is more moderate than Bernie, so her policies must be more realistic and detailed. This is a big reason why so many centrist liberals conceive of them as superior.

Sussman’s statement also leans heavily on the reputations the media has carefully constructed for both Bernie and Warren (which are largely predicated on the aforementioned mentality). To the many talking heads of the mainstream media, Bernie, unlike Warren, is an activist, not an intellectual. He’s loud, angry, and speaks with a working class, Brooklyn accent, clear indications that he doesn’t possess as weighty an intellect. This line of reasoning is buttressed by the belief that most activists are far stupider than their peers within the Academy, a pretentious and incorrect view held by many within elite circles.

Warren, in comparison, is calmer, frequently described as “professorial.” She first stepped into the spotlight as an expert on tax law, not some lefty rabble-rouser. Her media-reinforced brand therefore pushes us to assume that because of this scholarly background, any policies she produces must be more nuanced and better researched. At its core, this is blind adherence to a technocratic credentialism.

A quote from a recent Vox article about the candidates’ different Medicare-for-All tax plans does an excellent job highlighting these caricatures. Senior Correspondent Matthew Yglasias writes, “Warren has much more of a reputation as the uber-wonk with plans for everything, while Sanders is seen more as a moralist and a populist who cares less about the technical merits of proposals than whether they illustrate underlying points.”

Yglasias’ central argument, funnily enough, pushes back against these constructed reputations, noting that in the case of these healthcare tax plans, that “dynamic is reversed.” He says that although Warren’s plan, “a kind of regressive employer poll tax,” is an easier sell, it’s not economically sustainable in the long-term. On the other hand, Bernie’s plan to use a new broad tax to finance his vision is “how foreign single-payer systems are typically designed, and almost certainly what a team of policy wonks would recommend.” Interesting.

Of course, this is only one example, a single article comparing two policy plans. Both candidates have a full suite of other policies ripe for expert analysis. However, when we turn to other articles (or perhaps even a CNN roundtable), we shouldn’t expect fair, intelligent coverage of policy differences. After all, the aforementioned superficial reputations need to be constructed and reinforced by someone. This particular task falls to the affluent liberals who work for large media corporations and newspapers, the ones popular amongst similarly-minded coastal elites. Jacobin has done an excellent job of cataloging the clear anti-Bernie biases of this corporate media complex, from contemptuous coverage in the New York Times and Washington Post to seemingly deliberate attempts at avoiding mention of Bernie’s campaign on MSNBC. The number of baseless remarks and bizarrely critical articles that this complex churns out is ridiculously high, demonstrating a thinly-veiled hostility to the working class progressivism championed by Bernie.

As I mentioned previously, Yale students and America’s coastal elites, although well-educated, are not policy wonks. They possess no meaningful rubric through which they can evaluate the merits of various policies, and therefore rely on the constructed brands provided to them by the media they consume. And it is the brand of Elizabeth Warren, the brand of a moderately progressive Harvard professor, that most appeals to the elitist sensibilities of this privileged class. While many wealthy and well-educated Americans may enjoy the aesthetics of progressivism and woke-ness, they also fear being seen as overly moralistic or simplistic in their politics. Warren’s candidacy makes it so that a compromise is unnecessary. She allows privileged liberals to simultaneously appear woke and smart. It’s the best of both worlds.

I write all of this in light of Warren’s recent policy shift on healthcare, perhaps the most contentious issue in the 2020 Democratic primaries. For all intents and purposes, her move towards the “Medicare-for-All option” (a phrase terrifyingly reminiscent of Buttigieg’s plan) represents a retreat from effective and feasible universal healthcare legislation. This is a capitulation to the neoliberal center, indicative of a willingness to eschew progressive principle in favor of perceived political gain. It’s a decision that should cause any reasonable, nominally progressive fan of hers to seriously reconsider their support. But if I know Yale students and liberal elites (and I think I do), that reconsideration is unlikely to occur. Although many of them will argue that politics are certainly important, at the end of the day, for them, it’s a game of social capital and aesthetics. Whether or not Warren’s new healthcare plan will significantly harm working class people and marginalized groups isn’t nearly as important. Her brand takes precedence, and it always will.