Analysis by Chris Cillizza, CNN Editor-at-large

(CNN) -- Elizabeth Warren was in Iowa this weekend -- SHE'S RUNNING!! -- and played to generally positive reviews. But there was one moment that stood out to me as awkward and confusing. And yes, it had to do with her October announcement regarding her Native American heritage.

Here's the exchange between Warren and a questioner (shout-out to MJ Lee and Amanda Golden for this -- and bolding below is mine):

QUESTIONER: "Why did you undergo the DNA testing and give Donald Trump more fodder to be a bully?"

WARREN: "Yeah, well, you know, glad you asked that question, I genuinely am, and am glad we have a chance to talk about it. I am not a person of color. I am not a citizen of a tribe. Tribal citizenship is very different from ancestry. Tribes, and only tribes, determine tribal citizenship, and I respect that difference. I grew up out in Oklahoma, and like a lot of folks out in Oklahoma, we heard the family stories of our ancestry. When I first ran for public office, the first time was in 2012, and the Republicans honed in on this part of my history and thought they could make a lot of hay out of it, a lot of racial slurs and a lot of ugly stuff that went on. And so my decision was I'm just going to put it all out there. Took a while, but just put it all out there. All of my hiring records, including a DNA test, it's out there, it's online, anybody can look at it. It's there."

A lot of people -- myself very much included -- had been wondering exactly why Warren did what she did when she did.

An announcement that you probably, maybe, have some Native American blood in order to rebut the attacks from President Donald Trump that you sought to gain advancement by citing that heritage? (Note: There is no actual evidence Warren got ahead in academia by describing herself as Native American.) And to do it right in the heart of the 2018 campaign, as Democrats were trying to win back control of the House and Senate?

The "why" appears to be what most people suspected: Warren released the DNA test -- and a subsequent five-minute video explaining it -- to clear the decks before she ran for president. (Warren likely believed -- and it's hard to say she was wrong -- that her announcement would have zero effect on the Democratic fight for congressional majorities.) Warren wanted to deal with the whole Native American thing -- and Trump's repeated name-calling (he refers to her as "Pocahontas" in tweets) -- prior to announcing for president, which she did on New Year's Eve.

Obviously, that didn't work. Instead of putting aside any doubts as to whether Warren's past fumbling on the heritage question might be a fatal flaw that Trump could and would exploit, all Warren's video did was shine a bright light on the problem.

What Warren's announcement did was, effectively, say this to Democratic voters: REMEMBER WHEN I HAD THAT ISSUE IN 2012 WITH WHETHER I WAS A NATIVE AMERICAN?????

While Trump would never -- and will never -- stop attacking Warren based on what some DNA test said, the fact that the test was so hugely inconclusive should have been a warning sign to her that it was never going to have the we-can-all-put-this-debate-behind-us impact for which she was clearly hoping. When the entire video and reveal hang on this sentence from a Stanford geneticist -- "the facts suggest that you absolutely have a Native American ancestor in your pedigree" -- you know that you aren't going to get the outcome you were going for.

This isn't about Trump. Not really. As Warren said in her same answer in Iowa over the weekend: "Now, I can't stop Donald Trump from doing what he's going to do. I can't stop him from hurling racial insults. I don't have any power to do that." True!

What this was -- and is -- all about was Warren trying to solve a problem within the Democratic activist and donor base. There's a 0% chance she makes the move she did on her DNA test unless she has some indications that people within her party are worried about what Trump might do to her with it in the general election if she winds up as the Democratic nominee.

Now, at least, we have the explanation of why she did what she did from her own mouth. The decision was weird then. And even with Warren's explanation, it's just as weird now.