Elizabeth Warren still bounds on stage at campaign events like she just heard the starter pistol, often shouting “Woo-hoo” for emphasis.

She still has the most compelling stump speech of anyone in the Democratic field, explaining in Mason City, Iowa, on Saturday that her life arc, “like most Americans’, is not a straight-line story.” More than half the crowd at recent Warren campaign events stood in line for what the candidate called “the all-important part of democracy—selfies.” (In fact, in Milford, New Hampshire, late last week, more than two dozen Warren fans also waited to pose for photos with the family dog, a golden retriever named Bailey.)

And Warren is running second in the influential Des Moines Register survey. (True, a Monmouth University poll, released Monday, showed her placing fourth in Iowa with 15 percent, but, based on the margin of error, she could be as high as second.)

But for some reason the press is treating Warren like yesterday’s news, a shopworn contender whose strengths as a candidate pale next to the steadiness of Joe Biden’s support, the supposed Bernie Sanders surge, the novelty of Pete Buttigieg, and the underdog appeal of Amy Klobuchar. There is almost a sense that the well-funded Massachusetts senator has been stricken with the Kamala Harris “I’ve fallen and I can’t get up” syndrome.

The truth is that media narratives are the most volatile part of the Democratic race. Every blip of news prompts journalists to recalibrate the odds on the Democratic nomination fight, knowing, even as they do, that these campaign developments are as evanescent as a light dusting of snow. Every cable TV panel discussion, every print reporter desperate for an angle, every polling analyst out to update the odds needs a reason to explain why today is different from yesterday—even when it isn’t.