2020 not so far away

I believe that elected officials work for the people, not the other way around. After 24 years in the U.S. Army, I came home and found my district of southern West Virginia in poverty with people who were tired of a government that didn’t listen to them. That is when I decided to run for office and give the people of my district a voice in Washington.

“We’re going to make sure that the promise of America is available to everyone in this 21st century.” Former secretary of Housing and Urban Development Julián Castro, a Democrat, announces his 2020 presidential bid in San Antonio, where he served as mayor.

Am I allowed to say that Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez is likable?

To be honest, I’m not entirely sure. She has an easy, open demeanor, fun-loving smile, stunning good looks, and an ability to make arguments few others are brave enough to make. She’s manifestly sincere, charismatic, and, despite her occasional factual overreaches, engaging the issues that really matter. She can dance! She once went by “Sandy.” And when conservatives like me — or even Ann Coulter — are revisiting the question of tax redistribution in a society that is being torn apart by late capitalism, she makes a kind of sense. She is still a little wet behind the ears, and will doubtless mature in office, but her energy, good humor and, yes, charm are integral to her appeal. They help her persuade people of her arguments. There’s a reason some Republicans are owning themselves with their AOC obsession: They can recognize a deadly talent when they see it.

When you think of the last two Democratic presidents, Bill and Barack, you see the same thing: They both have charisma and, yes, likability, that they deployed to get elected and reelected. That’s how Kennedy beat Nixon; it’s how Reagan defeated Carter. And this is not a gendered thing. When I think back to the modern Democrats who lost, they all have something in common. They regard their unlikability as a kind of achievement, proof that they can win on substance alone, that the media is obsessed with trivia, and that most people are dumb and easily bamboozled.

So the Democrats saw Reagan’s smile and decided … yeah, Walter Mondale is the ticket! Next up: that dazzling Dukakis. Then … Al Gore, for Pete’s sake. Gore had by far the better case, had a popular incumbent president behind him, a booming economy, a budget surplus and rising wages, knew foreign policy cold, and was a visionary on climate change. He should have won in a landslide. But there is and was something so deeply strange about him, so stiff and pious and condescending, so stilted and entitled, he managed to turn the contest into a dead heat. Listening to my own inner Paul Krugman, I know he should have won. But within five minutes of his debate with George W. Bush in the fall of 2000, I knew he’d lose. The idea that Americans would voluntarily agree to have that dude lecturing them for four long years was absurd. And Kerry? That droning bore? I supported him, but feared it was over before it began.

The same, I’m sorry to say, with Hillary. But this time, any suggestion that she was actually charm-free, could not relate to ordinary people, couldn’t give a good speech, never ran an effective competitive campaign in her life, and made half the country’s skin crawl … well, we were all a bunch of misogynists, weren’t we? And maybe some were. But we were right, weren’t we? Which is why I have to say right now — in fear of God knows what — that I cannot see the tiniest chance of Elizabeth Warren winning the presidency, for the same reasons as Mondale, Dukakis, Gore, Kerry, and Hillary. If the Dems want to put their huffy principles above their need to win elections, they’re welcome to. Just don’t call everyone who actually wants them to win a misogynist, okay?

How might the chattering classes slice and dice the 2020 Democratic field? There are several ways to look at it:

1. Ideological lanes: Bernie Sanders will anchor the progressive lane, with potential competition from Elizabeth Warren, Tulsi Gabbard, Jeff Merkley and Sherrod Brown. If there’s a moderate lane, Joe Biden will be the pace-setter, with dark-horse House members John Delaney and Seth Moulton, former governor John Hickenlooper, and possibly Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti, all following in his wake. Down the road, Amy Klobuchar and Beto O’Rourke might appeal to moderate voters and opinion-leaders if Biden doesn’t run or does poorly. Kirsten Gillibrand, Cory Booker, and Pete Buttigieg are hard to pigeonhole ideologically. They, along with O’Rourke, Warren, Klobuchar, and multiple dark-horses (including 2004 nominee John Kerry) have potential as “party unity” candidates — a lane that tends to form late in the nomination cycle.

2. Racial/ethnic/gender lanes: The size of the likely 2020 field means multiple candidates from demographic groups that are rarely represented in presidential contests. There’s never been a Democratic primary field with more than one viable woman or African-American. Gabbard, Gillibrand, Klobuchar, and Warren could create a “women’s lane” in theory. Booker and Harris could battle for African-American votes, beginning in the early South Carolina primary. Julián Castro and Garcetti could attract the attention of Latino voters. And although it’s a sentiment expressed more in private than in public, there’s a constituency for the idea that Democrats need a white male to beat Trump — especially someone who can appeal to Rust Belt white working-class voters. Joe Biden and Sherrod Brown could wind up competing in a white working-class lane of their own.

3. Generational lanes: Joe Biden, Bernie Sanders, Elizabeth Warren, Mike Bloomberg and John Kerry are all potential Democratic candidates who are (or in Warren’s case, will soon be) in their 70s. That makes virtually everyone else a possible “youth candidate.” Gabbard, Pete Buttigieg, and Calfornia congressman Eric Swalwell are in their thirties; Booker, Castro, Garcetti, and O’Rourke are in their 40s. If Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez had reached the constitutionally minimum age of 35, she might be a compelling candidate for the hard-to-mobilize, but sizable, millennial constituency.

4. Fame lanes: In a big field like 2020’s, less-well-known candidates will inevitably battle with each other for the media attention the celebrity candidates take for granted. In a social media era, fame can arrive quickly (as Ocasio-Cortez has demonstrated). So perhaps one or two of the candidates you have never heard of can strike name-ID gold before things get really serious.

5. The electability lane: Depending on all sorts of factors such as the objective condition of the country and Trump’s relative popularity, the Democratic nominating contest could revolve around evidence and impressions about various candidates’ ability to beat the incumbent. Several proto-candidates, including Biden, Brown and O’Rourke, have nascent “electability” arguments that could grow powerful if Democrats begin to worry the 2020 general election will be as close as the last one. General election trial heats testing this or that candidate against Trump could become important, despite the bad experience Democrats had with trusting 2016 polls showing Hillary Clinton handily beating the mogul. Very particular electoral college arguments for electability — e.g., Sherrod Brown’s popularity in Ohio — could matter in a close nomination race.

6. Luck lanes: The hardest thing to anticipate and adjust to are the fortuitous events that shake up nomination contests before and just after voters begin voting. If, for example, both Biden and Sanders — who lead most early polls — decide not to run, everything could change. The millstone Elizabeth Warren is trying to shrug off involving the essentially silly “issue” of her claimed Native American ancestry is an example of variables that are hard to calculate in advance. Whoever does best in critical moments of the nominating contest could rise to the top of the charts with a bullet. It’s impossible to know in advance.

And that’s the key thing to keep in mind when contemplating efforts to neatly classify the Democratic field. The one thing we should have learned from the 2016 GOP contest is that every rule can be broken. Going into that contest, political scientists had largely concluded that party elites pre-control presidential nominations. Trump blew up that supposition, which is part of the reason so many potential Democratic challengers to him are standing in line for 2020 in what some have labeled the “Why Not Me?” race. The primaries may surprise us, and there’s even a chance no one will have the nomination nailed down before Democrats gather for their convention in July. The “lanes” surviving candidates would traverse in the first truly deliberative Democratic convention since 1952 are impossible to anticipate. So perhaps we should treat it as a wide-open highway.

As to why she wants to take on the country’s top job, put simply, she wants to stand up for other moms and their children.

“As a young mom, I’m going to fight for other people’s kids as hard as I would fight for my own,” Gilbert told the host. “Which is why I believe that health care should be a right and not a privilege.”

“It’s why I believe we should have better public schools for our kids because it shouldn’t matter what block you grow up on,” the mother of two continued. “And I believe anybody who wants to work hard enough should be able to get whatever job training they need to earn their way into the middle class.”

“But, you are never going to accomplish any of these things if you don’t take on the systems of power that make all of it impossible — which is, taking on institutional racism, taking on corruption and greed in Washington, taking on the special interests that write legislation in the dead of the night. And I know that I have the compassion and the courage and the fearless determination to get that done.”

While not as nationally recognized as Harris, Gillibrand, a two-term senator, has built a reputation as a fierce dissenter of President Donald Trump and his administration.

Once a more moderate Democrat during her time serving as a Congresswoman for rural upstate New York, she has since sharpened her political priorities, including a push for gun reform.

In a December interview with CNN’s Van Jones, she spoke out against White House’s policy of separating migrant children from their parents and said that the president’s “nasty language” wouldn’t scare her away from a presidential bid.

More recently, Gillibrand protested the ongoing government shutdown — now the longest in American history. She tweeted a list of issues that Congress should be focused on instead of funding Trump’s proposed border wall with Mexico.

“President Trump is using the American people as a bargaining chip, and his shutdown is holding our government hostage,” Gillibrand tweeted on Sunday. “Instead of wasting time discussing his wasteful, ineffective border wall, here are all the issues Congress could be tackling instead.”

In eight succeeding tweets, she listed a range of issues that she deems important — from approving “Medicare for all” and increasing the minimum wage, to environmental protections that will fight climate change.

Beyond these issues, Gillibrand explains on her website that one of her top priorities is to strengthen the American economy by helping everyday Americans get good jobs and supporting small businesses.

“She is determined to make sure that all New Yorkers have the opportunity to reach their potential,” the senator’s website explains, “and she has consistently been a voice for the voiceless across New York and all around the country.”

On the “invisible primary” campaign trail in which actual and potential 2020 presidential candidates strut their preliminary stuff, it’s been an active January for California Senator Kamala Harris. She conducted a brisk bicoastal book tour with national media appearances to accompany the release of her memoir, The Truths We Hold (with a children’s picture book sidecar). She hasn’t announced or set up a formal exploratory committee yet (though rumor has it she might do so in conjunction with the Martin Luther King Jr. holiday), but she’s already decided to locate her campaign headquarters in Baltimore, and is acting like a candidate in every possible way.

But perhaps the most convincing token of her proto-candidacy is that she’s getting blasted by progressive voices for her record as a prosecutor in San Francisco and Sacramento, reflecting the problems this putative “unity candidate” could have with the Democratic Party’s increasingly powerful left flank. In a New York Times op-ed, Lara Bazelon, a law professor and criminal justice reform activist from Harris’ home state, didn’t mince words:

Time after time, when progressives urged her to embrace criminal justice reforms as a district attorney and then the state’s attorney general, Ms. Harris opposed them or stayed silent. Most troubling, Ms. Harris fought tooth and nail to uphold wrongful convictions that had been secured through official misconduct that included evidence tampering, false testimony and the suppression of crucial information by prosecutors.

Much of Bazelon’s indictment of Harris covers ground familiar to those who follow California politics and are familiar with long-standing grievances progressives have held against the junior senator during her steady rise to state and then national prominence. But there were some jarring details, too:

Ms. Harris also championed state legislation under which parents whose children were found to be habitually truant in elementary school could be prosecuted, despite concerns that it would disproportionately affect low-income people of color.

This is a direct attack on Harris’ credibility as a symbol of progressive diversity (she has a Jamaican father and an Indian mother) just before a campaign in which her ability to build a base among minority voters is crucial to her prospects. As Jamilah King notes, there could be a lot more flak where that came from:

As a woman of color, she embodies two key Democratic constituencies, and she is beloved by the wing of the party that broke for Hillary Clinton. But among those on the far left, including many die-hard Bernie Sanders supporters, she’s an object of disdain, a Hillary-bot with weak progressive credentials. While that segment of the left might oppose anyone who isn’t one particular septuagenarian, the Week summed up this critique when it slammed Harris for her “rather Hillary Clinton-esque tendency to say the right thing but not follow through.”

So at a minimum Harris will have to walk a tightrope wherein she addresses concerns about her record without looking like she’s repudiating her own career or aligning herself with people who favor more radical steps to dismantle rather than simply “reform” the criminal justice system. That won’t be easy.

Harris is not, of course, alone in possessing “baggage” that will attract criticism from within her own party and intense media scrutiny. Joe Biden famously has enough baggage to derail a train’s luggage car. Critics of Bernie Sanders always suspected that conservatives built a massive oppo research file on the Vermont socialist that they would have pushed with hundreds of millions of dollars of negative “stories” and ads had he won the 2016 Democratic presidential nomination, matching or exceeding the damage they did to Hillary Clinton. Elizabeth Warren has struggled to overcome the stupid but pervasive “Pocohontas” taunt, along with persistent (if probably sexist) doubts about her “likability.” Cory Booker’s past links with Wall Street and support for private school vouchers will be a problem for him. Both Beto O’Rourke and Kirsten Gillibrand are vulnerable to the kind of “flip-flopper” charges that tend to undermine voter trust. And Amy Klobuchar’s history of high staff turnover has spurred rumors about her personality and temperament.

Nobody’s perfect, of course, and presidential candidates – notably the 2016 winner – have overcome heavy baggage before. But the sheer size and volatility of the 2020 Democratic field could amplify internecine sniping considerably, to the particular detriment of candidates hoping to consolidate party-wide support before or after voters begin voting. Maybe heavy attacks like those hitting Harris now will subside over time, but they could leave portions of the party electorate with enduring if not eradicable negative feelings.

But far and away the most important reason Democrats need to think about this issue is that they face an opponent who is more than willing to use intraparty criticisms of this or that candidate – even those emanating from the ideological left – in an uninhibited way, as he showed against Clinton in attacking her for positions most Republicans took (supporting the Iraq War, for example) or for rhetoric he shared or exceeded (the lock-em-up message surrounding the 1994 crime bill). Given President Trump’s reasonably clear 2020 strategy of building a rock-solid base in the minority of voters who like him and then destroying his opponent with relentless attacks that drain otherwise sympathetic electoral support, every chink in a Democratic candidate’s armor is going to be exploited.

So it’s best for Democrats to deal with the baggage now rather than later, and to deal with it in a manner that reflects constant recognition that none of it matters remotely as much as the sins of commission and omission Donald Trump commits five times an hour, as a matter of principle and nefarious inclination. He’s not just the wolf at the door. He’s the wolf in the White House.

To be sure, every candidate has flaws and liabilities. And defeating Donald Trump must surely be the Democratic Party’s No. 1 objective. Further, while O’Rourke failed to endorse Ortiz Jones, there is little question that his remarkable Senate campaign aided down-ballot Democratic candidates all across the Lone Star State.

But the Democrats have no shortage of qualified, appealing candidates. And all available polling suggests that Trump will struggle to beat just about any of them. Meanwhile, the many virtues of O’Rourke’s 2018 Senate campaign make a stronger case for his candidacy against John Cornyn in 2020 than for his competing with more experienced and progressive Democrats — who did not claim that they had a patriotic duty to aid an incumbent Republican last year — for Team Blue’s presidential nomination.

Ultimately, what makes Biden and O’Rourke’s conduct disqualifying is not the effect it may (or may not) have had in 2018, but rather, what it says about how they will govern in 2021. If Democrats want to treat climate change as an existential threat — and health care and the franchise as inalienable rights — then they will need to treat the Republican Party as an enemy.

Bipartisan overtures will never persuade congressional Republicans to vote against the interests of fossil fuel companies, or back dramatic expansions in public health insurance, or dismantle election laws that give their coalition wildly disproportionate power. Only a unified, Democratic government — that is willing to ruthlessly prioritize ideological goals over bipartisan comity — will have any chance of overcoming our legislative system’s copious veto points, and passing anything resembling a proportionate response to our nation’s climate, health-care, and democratic crises into law.

A 70 percent tax on incomes over $10 million isn’t cool. You know what’s cool? A 2 percent tax on the wealth of all Americans who own more than $50 million in assets.

Or so Elizabeth Warren’s policy advisers seem to believe. Weeks after Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez brought expropriating the super-rich’s income back into fashion, the Massachusetts senator is preparing to hit the plutocrats where it hurts — right in the assets. As the Washington Post reports:

Emmanuel Saez and Gabriel Zucman, two left-leaning economists at the University of California, Berkeley, have been advising Warren on a proposal to levy a 2 percent wealth tax on Americans with assets above $50 million, as well as a 3 percent wealth tax on those who have more than $1 billion, according to Saez.



… Warren’s proposal includes at least three new mechanisms to combat tax evasion, according to a person familiar with the plan. Those are a significant increase in funding for the Internal Revenue Service; a mandatory audit rate requiring a certain number of people who pay the wealth tax to be subject to an audit every year; and a one-time tax penalty for those who have more than $50 million and try to renounce their U.S. citizenship.

Taxing assets has many advantages over (merely) taxing income. First and foremost, that’s where the money is. The gap between the one-percent’s annual earnings — and everyone else’s — is large. But the chasm between the former’s holdings and the 99 percent’s is gargantuan. As of 2015, the richest one percent of Americans were bringing home 20 percent of our country’s national income — but commanding 35 percent of our nation’s wealth. Meanwhile, the top 0.1 percent lay claim to assets as valuable as the bottom 90 percent’s combined.

Thus, soaking the rich through wealth taxes will get you a lot of bang for their buck. According to Zucman and Saez’s calculations, Warren’s wealth tax would bring in $2.75 trillion during its first decade — despite affecting only 75,000 of America’s families. There is no way to generate that much revenue from income taxes without digging into the middle-class’s pockets. And polling data suggests that a majority of Americans are eager to support a wide variety of ambitious progressive programs like Medicare for All or a federal jobs guarantee — so long as rich people pick up the tab.

Further, Warren’s policy makes for good messaging. As Boston University political scientist Spencer Piston documents in his recent book Class Attitudes in America, many swing voters believe that the rich “get more than they deserve,” and are inclined to support policies (and parties) that target the wealthy. But Democrats have often failed to capitalize on widespread resentment of the rich in the past by neglecting to deploy populist rhetoric that would convey the distributional implications of progressive policy goals. For example, Piston shows that support for the estate tax surges when voters are made to understand it as an inheritance tax on the super rich. The distributional implications of a tax on $50 million fortunes will be harder for Republicans to obfuscate than those of a 70 percent top marginal tax rate (marginal tax rates being a concept that many voters do not immediately comprehend).

And yet, trying to spread the wealth around also has its downsides. First, it’s a lot harder to tax assets than it is to tax income because the former are easier to hide, and their value is harder for Uncle Sam to assess. In 1990, eight OECD countries had wealth taxes; today, only four do. The abandonment of such taxes may reflect a rightward drift in economic policy over the past 29 years. But it’s also the case that these taxes have tended to bring in less revenue than their boosters had hoped. Meanwhile, the more money the wealthy spend on tax-evasion services, the less capital they collectively invest in things that have some social utility (like enterprises that create jobs or value for consumers).

All this said, the United States isn’t an ordinary country. It is the wealthiest nation in human history — and, for at least a few more years, the closest thing this planet has to a hegemonic power. If the U.S. took policing global tax evasion as seriously as it took policing global terrorism, it’s hard to believe that it couldn’t make asset taxation at least somewhat viable.

CNN)The 2020 Democratic presidential field is still developing, but it's already the most diverse in modern political history.

Eight different Democratic candidates have either declared that they are running for president (and are still running) or have formed an exploratory committee, according to CNN. Four are women (a record), one is an Asian man (Andrew Yang), one is a Hispanic man (Julián Castro) and one is a gay man (Pete Buttigieg).

All told, seven of the eight Democratic candidates are non-white, women or identify as LGBT, or some combination of the three.


Of those eight, six have either been a member of Congress, governor, held a cabinet position or are polling at 1% or greater in the polls.


The previous high for candidates who met this criteria for a major party nomination was five. That, of course, occurred in 2016 when Ben Carson, Ted Cruz, Carly Fiorina, Bobby Jindal and Marco Rubio all sought the Republican nomination.

Now, it's far from a guarantee that Democrats are going to nominate someone who isn't a white man. Joe Biden and Beto O'Rourke, for example, would start off with a good shot of winning, if they decide to run.
Still, the movement away from white male candidates who identify as straight in Democratic presidential politics is quite noticeable. The last two Democratic nominees for president were Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton. The last straight white man to win the Democratic nomination for president was John Kerry in 2004, after Democrats nominated them in every single prior presidential election since the party was founded.



The diversifying Democratic presidential fields of recent years mirrors a diversifying Democratic Party. In the 2018 midterm, only about 25% of Democratic voters were straight white men, according to exit polls. A majority, about 58%, were women. About 10% of Democratic voters were nonwhite. Nearly 10% of Democratic voters identified as gay, lesbian, bisexual or transgender.

In other words, the Democratic field is so diverse compared to other years past because this year's field is reflective of its party's voters for the first time in a very long time.

(CNN)Kamala Harris officially launched her 2020 presidential campaign Sunday in her birthplace of Oakland, promising to be a fighter "for the people" and stating that it is time to restore what she views as the loss of American values under President Donald Trump.

"We are here because the American Dream and our American democracy are under attack and on the line like never before," the California senator said. "We are here at this moment in time because we must answer a fundamental question. Who are we? Who are we as Americans? So, let's answer that question to the world and each other right here and right now. America: we are better than this."

she focused on the need for unity at a time when the nation is deeply polarized, arguing that while Americans have differences in ideology, race, and ethnicity, they should unite to tackle their common challenges.
Speaking before a giant American flag in front of Oakland's City Hall, Harris was surrounded by giant screens that alternated images of the crowd with a picture of her campaign logo—"Kamala Harris for the People"—and a request that supporters text "Fearless" to a campaign number in order to show their support.


"My heart is full right now," she said as she came on stage. "I am so proud to be a daughter of Oakland California," she said referencing the Civil Rights activism of her parents -- immigrants from India and Jamaica who came in "pursuit of a dream." "The fight for justice is everyone's responsibility."

The televised town hall with Sen. Kamala Harris (D-Calif.) set a CNN viewing record, the network said Tuesday.

The event, moderated by CNN’s Jake Tapper on Monday night in Des Moines, Iowa, averaged 1.957 million views — the most for a single-candidate town hall in the network's history, and 75 percent above its four-week average in the 10 p.m slot, CNN said in a news release, citing Nielsen ratings. Monday's average of 712,000 viewers aged 25-45 eclipsed its competitors in that key demographic: MSNBC had 404,000 during the same hour, while Fox News had 395,000.