Elizabeth Warren, the Harvard lawprof, learning to campaign.

"She is new at it, and learning on an unusually prominent stage."

Despite her folksy approach, the response of those who meet her for the first time is often polite formality, not the warmer, more familiar type of exchange that voters tend to have with [incumbent Senator Scott] Brown.

At a St. Patrick’s Day lunch in Quincy, Ms. Warren gamely joined a dais full of local politicians and offered a few jokes that promptly fell flat.

“I’ll get there with you guys,” she ventured after a joke about Rick Santorum fizzled.

What was the joke? Can we get video?

Yet two days later, at a much larger breakfast in South Boston, Ms. Warren breezed through a comedy routine, drawing particular laughs when she said she had heard that Mr. Brown’s barn jacket cost $600.

“Wow, here’s a guy who could use a consumer advocate,” she said.

Who was at this "much larger breakfast"? Why can't the NYT anticipate my questions and answer them?!

Like Mr. Brown, she is also using social media to share personal details that might help her connect. On Saturday, she posted a picture of herself on Facebook dyeing eggs with her young granddaughters. She has posted on Facebook and Twitter about her golden retriever, Otis, and about the fact that she bakes “a wicked apple pie.”

Pictures please. Or at least links. Blah. I'm just visualizing generic grandkids, Easter eggs, and golden retriever. By the way, I added the specificity of "Easter." The NYT just has here dyeing eggs. Maybe she had a non-Easter agenda. I shouldn't presume.

By the way, the new Rasmussen poll has Warren ahead of Brown 46% to 45% (and he was leading her by 5 in February). Interestingly: "Warren leads among those who rate their finances positively; Brown leads among those who consider them poor." Isn't it funny that the more well-off tend to go for a Democrat who offers to speak for the less well-off?

Ah! I've found the Elizabeth Warren joke about Rick Santorum. Commenting on the absence of Gov. Deval Patrick at the St. Patrick's Day event, she said: "He's in Rick Santorum's favorite place today- the Virgin Islands."

I can see why the NYT left that one out.