How To Watch The 2020 Elections Unfold

Maybe you like Pelosi and her leadership team or maybe you hate them. Or maybe you like it when they do something decent and hate them when they do something awful. Yesterday Pelosi sent out a statement condemning Ilhan Omar for trying to break the iron grip of the Likud (and its tail, AIPAC) over U.S. Middle East policy. It was signed by Pelosi and Majority Leader Steny Hoyer, Majority Whip Jim Clyburn, Assistant Speaker Ben Ray Luján, Caucus Chair Hakeem Jeffries and Caucus Vice Chair Katherine Clark. I was surprised that the only committed progressive among the House leadership at that level, Katherine Clark, signed too. Maybe they forced her. Maybe not. Sad.

Bernie said this many times during the 2016 primary: "This is what I believe and I've always believed-- that real change never ever takes place from the top on down; it is always from the bottom on up." Pelosi and her crew are going to pass the Green New Deal and Medicare-For-All and will bring back free public colleges when we force them to-- and not one day sooner. The people lead; the politicians follow. Unless the people abrogate their responsibilities, a very dangerous thing if you want to keep a democracy a democracy.

The meme up top is from an MSNBC promo for Chris Hayes' show. BINGO! BINGO! BINGO! Who will they fight for? What will they fight for? And who can be trusted to do what they say? The rest is noise. That's the 2020 Democratic primary to pick a candidate to oppose Trump. Who can be trusted? Who, meaning which politician?

You know who comes out really badly when you use that lens? Trump, of course. He fights for the rich and the corrupt and for his own delusions of grandeur. And on the Democratic side... there are a lot of candidates running around-- with varying degrees of sincerity-- saying "I'm sorry" for past behavior, none worse than Kirsten Gillibrand, Mike Bloomfield (who somehow thinks he's going to persuade South Carolina black voters that it was OK to order cops to shoot blacks in NYC) and Joe Biden. And speaking of law and order... what do we make about Kamala Harris' criminal justice record while she was San Francisco D.A. and then California Attorney General?

A lot of this tends to be kind of abstract for voters though. But you know what's not abstract? Taxes. And who to believe on taxes is the beginning and the end for many voters. Reuters took a little look at how the Trump #TaxScam is working out for people this year. Short version: not well. "Republicans," Reuters reported, "passed a $1.5 trillion tax overhaul in the final weeks of 2017 that cut rates for both individuals and corporations, giving fellow Republican Trump a major policy victory. Democrats had warned that the cuts and other changes in the overhaul would primarily benefit the country's wealthiest, and many are eager to see how it will affect average Americans." So far "the average refund of $1,865 this year was 8.4% smaller than the average refund in the period last year."

It's less abstract when it hits you in the pocketbook that way. And... everything else is noise. Watch-- and think about Chris is saying here:



And one more thing: Who's financing them?