Photo: Michael Dwyer/AP

Did she screw up? Yes. Should she issue a public apology and draw a line under it, once and for all? Most definitely. Is it fatal to her 2020 chances? Don’t. Be. Silly. As a whole host of right-wing Republicans and bank bosses have discovered over the years, dismissing Elizabeth Warren is a fool’s game. You think the former professor and progressive icon is done? That she can’t win in 2020? Ask her former GOP opponent, Scott Brown, who Warren replaced in the Senate in 2012 — and who, for a time, seemed unbeatable — if he agrees. The then-Harvard academic, who had never held elected office, ended up beating Brown by 8 percentage points after mounting an insurgent left-populist campaign against him. Remember her passionate, off-the-cuff speech on redistribution at a supporter’s home in Andover, Massachusetts, which went viral in September 2011? “I hear all this, you know, ‘Well, this is class warfare, this is whatever,’” she told her living room audience. “No! There is nobody in this country who got rich on his own. Nobody.” She continued: “You built a factory out there — good for you! But I want to be clear. You moved your goods to market on the roads the rest of us paid for. You hired workers the rest of us paid to educate.” Listen to her comments in full, as more than a million people have on YouTube:

Ask Mitch McConnell if he agrees that Warren is finished. In February 2017, the Democratic senator was in the midst of giving a speech criticizing then-attorney general nominee Jeff Sessions, and reading from a letter by Coretta Scott King, when she was interrupted and then shut down by the Senate majority leader. “She was warned,” he later explained. “She was given an explanation. Nevertheless, she persisted.” It was a PR disaster for the Republicans, as those last three words became a feminist rallying cry for the anti-Trump resistance, while #LetLizSpeak trended on Twitter. Watch McConnell trying to silence Warren on the floor of the Senate, as 2.7 million people have on YouTube:

Ask the hosts of CNBC’s “Squawk Box” if they agree that the senior senator from Massachusetts is done. The three of them tried to take down Warren in a live TV interview in July 2013. They failed. Host Brian Sullivan argued that new regulations couldn’t prevent banks from taking risky bets and going bust. “No, that is just wrong!” Warren responded, schooling him on post-New Deal history, as she pointed out that none of the big banks failed in the 50 years after Glass-Steagall was passed. Hear her explanation in full, and watch her humiliate the CNBC trio, as 2.5 million people on YouTube have:

Ask former Wells Fargo chief executive John Stumpf if he agrees that Warren is down and out. “What have you actually done to hold yourself accountable?” she asked the stuttering bank boss, as he testified in front of the Senate Banking Committee in September 2016. “Have you resigned as CEO or chairman of Wells Fargo? … Have you returned one nickel of the millions of dollars that you were paid while this scam was going on? … I will take that as a ‘no’ then.” It was a bravura performance. She “tore him a new Stumpf-hole,” joked late-night host Stephen Colbert. Watch her smackdown of Stumpf, as 1.7 million people have on YouTube:

Are we supposed to believe that these viral videos of Warren in action, bashing bankers and ridiculing Republicans, are all irrelevant now because of a single, misguided, five-and-a-half minute video about her ancestry? Or that her longstanding campaigns for fairer taxation and better regulation, or her ferocious attacks on racial and income inequality, should take a back seat to this row over her Native American heritage? Seriously? Did I mention that there is a white nationalist sitting in the White House, with an unmatched record of presidential corruption and criminality? Can we focus? Please? This is one of the few Democratic senators who needs no encouragement to take the fight to Republican politicians, or greedy bankers, or right-wing pundits. This is a white liberal who isn’t afraid to call the criminal justice system “racist” from “front to back,” or demand action against “the lingering effects of housing discrimination,” or highlight “the staggering gap of wealth between white communities and communities of color.”