Do voters favor wonkery or personality?

That’s the choice facing Democrats, according to a recent piece in the Washington Examiner by GOP consultant Liz Mair, which contrasts Elizabeth Warren’s policy-focused campaign with the Biden camp’s emphasis on personality. Unsurprisingly, the op-ed largely dismisses Bernie Sanders — leading the field nationally alongside Warren, according to a Monmouth poll released earlier this week — devoting only a single sentence to the claim: “[Warren’s] policies are almost indistinguishable from Sanders’s, yet [are] better spelled-out and more detailed.”

The conservative bona fides of its author notwithstanding, this framing of the race has also gained considerable traction among liberal pundits and talking heads who increasingly perceive the difference between Sanders and Warren as one of wonkish policymaking versus nonspecific political grandstanding. That was the narrative advanced by former Hillary Clinton staffer Zerlina Maxwell on MSNBC this week, where she claimed: