Former Obama administration adviser Elizabeth Warren has announced that she will run for the nomination to challenge Sen. Scott Brown (R-MA) and reclaim Ted Kennedy’s Senate seat for the Democrats. Ever since the president passed her over as head of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau she helped create, liberals have avidly hoped Warren would run.

“I’m going to do this,” said Warren in a video announcement on her campaign website. “The reason is straightforward: Middle-class families have been chipped at, hacked at, and squeezed and hammered for a generation now, and I don’t think Washington gets it.”

The Democratic primary field is crowded, but so far there is no challenger who can touch Brown in either fundraising or the polls. Progressives believe Warren can strike a cord.