YOU'D HOPE THAT PROFESSORS KNEW HOW TO BE INTELLECTUALLY COHERENT.

Inside Higher Ed's Colleen Flaherty notes that aged vinegar isn't necessarily well-preserved.

As a woman running for president, Senator Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts, a Democrat, was bound to encounter the likability bias: assert yourself as a man and you're seen as a boss, yet assert yourself as a woman, and you're seen as bossy.

But a recent dig to Warren's likability came from a somewhat unexpected source, at a somewhat unexpected angle. In an interview with MSNBC, former Senator Claire McCaskill of Missouri, another Democrat, suggested that Warren was struggling with being "in command of the policy" and still being "relatable."

Then McCaskill defined Warren's fundamental "challenge" like this: "[F]rankly, sometimes she comes very close to that professor I just wanted to be quiet."

The first problem is that there are lots of educated people who never learned how not to be stupid about being smart.

Tom Nichols, University Professor of national security affairs at the U.S. Naval War College and author of The Death of Expertise: The Campaign Against Established Knowledge and Why It Matters, said that "professorial" is "not a compliment."

To most people, he said, it means "long-winded gasbag pontificating on things that don't have a lot of relevance to the ordinary person."

Politics, meanwhile, "requires connection with a spectrum of people, not the ones that have self-selected to sit in your classroom. Unlike your students, they don't have to listen to you, and you have no ability to make them let you finish a thought."

No matter how educated one is, Nichols added, "voters hate politicians who come across as superior or better educated, or knowing more. That's just the nature of democracy in the U.S."

The second problem is that the Democrats have this conceit, going back to at least Franklin Roosevelt's brains trust, that somehow Credentialed Elites plus Presidential Power plus Tax and Spend ... work.

They don't.  But the senator doesn't grasp that.  Her own words convict her.

On Friday, Warren told a large crowd at the Auditorium Theatre at Roosevelt University that big money has too much power in government.

“Whatever issue brought you here today — I guarantee if there is a decision to be made in Washington, it has been touched by money, it has been moved, shaped and accepted by people with money,” she said.

Yes, and there are lots of decisions being made in Washington, and she's the lady with the plans to take even more decisions in Washington, and each of them is going to bring out the rent seekers the way steam locomotives draw casual train enthusiasts.

I stumbled upon that Friday rally.  There was a rail enthusiast presentation going on nearby, and on my way in, I noticed a troop of bicycle police at the theater (there was a concert going on, the other side of Michigan Avenue, didn't look like it was going to draw the yobs), and when I left the presentation the Warren rally was breaking up.

To call it a rally is probably to exaggerate.  The senator doesn't have the energy of Donald Trump, even on a good day, and the people leaving the theater were the kind of sensible-shoes types you'd probably see at one of the mainstream Protestant churches that are all about Social Concern with maybe a few parables thrown in, not exactly the kind of people you'd see wearing #MAGA caps and high-fiving each other, and approving passers-by.  Oh, they were carrying signs.  "Warren has a plan."  I just wanted to catch my train, and decided not to bait anybody with a "Stalin had plans" riposte, not that anybody was into proselytizing or high-fiving anyway.

That noted, here you stand, sensible Council of Churches type with your "Warren has a plan" sign, and over here stands a fired up Deplorable with a "Keep America Great" sign, and we'll see who is more joyful.