CNN reports:

In Washington, the political world was on edge as it waited for the long-anticipated release of special counsel Robert Mueller’s report on the Russia investigation.

In Boston, Elizabeth Warren’s policy team was also waiting — but for a different kind of document.

It came on a Monday in mid-April, as Warren was kicking off a three-state tour around her new offshore drilling and public lands proposal.

“I love data!” she wrote in a memo that was viewed by CNN. “Yes, I’m on board for $50K in forgiveness for everyone under $100k in family income, with smooth transition from $100K to $250K. Yay!”

It was a critical sign-off for Warren’s landmark student debt forgiveness relief plan. She and her advisers would volley memos back and forth for several more days before the senator ultimately issued a final verdict on the plan. One aide would call it, “The Decision Memo.”

Warren’s personal involvement in her sweeping student loan relief plan — and her decision to make it a cornerstone of her presidential candidacy — provides a crucial snapshot of the internal workings of a campaign that has widely become regarded as one of the most policy-driven in recent history. Behind Warren’s rise in recent polls is a campaign machine churning out a stream of policy proposals — all overseen, and constantly tinkered with, by Warren herself.

Over the course of several weeks, CNN interviewed Warren’s most senior campaign aides and visited the senator’s headquarters in Boston to assemble the clearest picture yet of how Warren’s policy plans come to life.

Warren, her advisers say, has been an intimate part of crafting every one of the 23 policy plans her campaign has released so far this year. In many cases, the priorities come from her directly, like her proposals for student-loan forgiveness and free public college. In others, Warren has picked up on ideas from experts or even regular voters – her idea to nominate a public school teacher for education secretary, for instance, came from a teacher who spoke to her in a photo line.

“Every one of the decisions is her decision,” Jon Donenberg, Warren’s policy director said in an interview. “Both from the beginning of what do we want to focus on and when and how, all the way up to what level of detail do we have in the proposal.” [Continue reading…]