It’s early, but this much is true: Elizabeth Warren is running the most impressive presidential campaign in ages, certainly the most impressive campaign within my lifetime.

I don’t mean that the Massachusetts senator is a better speaker than anyone who has ever run, nor a more strident revolutionary, nor as charismatic a shaper of her public image. It’s not even that she has better ideas than her opponents, though on a range of issues she certainly does.

I’m impressed instead by something more simple and elemental: Warren actually has ideas. She has grand, detailed and daring ideas, and through these ideas she is single-handedly elevating the already endless slog of the 2020 presidential campaign into something weightier and more interesting than what it might otherwise have been: a frivolous contest about who hates Donald Trump most.

[Farhad Manjoo answered questions about his column on Twitter.]

Warren’s approach is ambitious and unconventional. She is betting on depth in a shallow, tweet-driven world. By offering so much honest detail so early, she risks turning off key constituencies, alienating donors and muddying the gauzy visionary branding that is the fuel for so much early horse-race coverage. It’s worth noting that it took Warren months of campaigning and reams of policy proposals to earn her a spot on the cover of Time Magazine. Meanwhile, because they match the culture’s Aaron Sorkinian picture of what a smart progressive looks like, Beto and Buttigieg — whose policy depth can be measured in tossed-off paragraphs — are awarded fawning coverage just for showing up male.