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Some politicians running for federal office make it sound as if the biggest problem facing our country is that we dont send enough of our paychecks to Washington, D.C.

They propose increasing or creating new federal taxes on income, payrolls, business profits, carbon emissions, financial transactions, wealth, and more.

Before they start trying to spend more and more of our money, they would do well to consider just how much theyre already spending. Looking back over the last decade, its clear theyve already entered the drunken sailor stage.

SENATE OKS SPENDING BILLS TO AVOID GOVERNMENT SHUTDOWN, SENDING THEM TO TRUMP'S DESK

From 2010 through 2019, U.S. households sent an average of $228,000 to Washington. Heres the math.

The Office of Management and Budget reports that federal revenues totaled $29.3 trillion during that period. The Census Bureau estimates there are currently 128 million households in the country. Thus, each households share of the tax burden comes out to around $228,000.

And this number is conservative, as in low. Adjusting for inflation and the smaller number of households at the start of the decade would cause the estimate to go even higher.

The federal government collected an average of $27,000 in revenue per household in 2019.

According to the latest data from the Congressional Budget Office, federal revenue hit an all-time high of $3.46 trillion in 2019, or roughly $27,000 per household. The vast majority of the haul comes from individual income and payroll taxes. Thats money directly out of your pocket.

The federal bill is hefty enough. When we consider state and local taxes, the full burden of government grows larger. The Tax Foundation estimates that workers need January, February, March, and half of April just to cover their full tax bill.

Federal revenue in 2019 matched the combined economic output of 13 states. It is difficult to comprehend the total amount.

If measured in terms of state economies, it would require the combined output of Indiana, Arizona, Wisconsin, Missouri, Connecticut, Louisiana, Oregon, South Carolina, Alabama, Kentucky, Oklahoma, Iowa, and Utah to reach $3.46 trillion.

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The fruits of that much labor ought to be more than enough to satisfy our politicians.

Each households share of the decades deferred taxes (debt) is $88,000.

We can think of government debt as deferred taxes. Washington placed an absolutely staggering $11.3 trillion on the national credit card over the decade.

That averages out to $88,000 in new federal debt per household.

Some would argue that the debt justifies a significant increase in taxes. This is the wrong prescription. Federal spending has grown far too fast, and is projected to increase even faster as more of the baby boomer generation receives benefits from Social Security and Medicare.

Real alternatives exist. By eliminating wasteful programs and reforming others, we could reduce federal spending and the national debt while protecting families from tax hikes.

A massive expansion of the federal government would require big tax hikes on the middle class.

Some politicians would have you believe it is possible to fund grandiose plans such as "Medicare for-all" and a Green New Deal while only raising taxes on the rich. Its not.

Even if Washington confiscated every dollar of corporate income and every penny of income from those earning above $200,000 per year, it wouldnt come close to paying for the full progressive agenda.

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In reality, a European-style social welfare state requires European-style taxes. Yes, that means higher income tax rates on high earners. But it also means dramatically higher taxes on incomes of $40,000, punishing sales taxes, and anemic economic growth.

American families would be better off keeping more of their hard-earned money in the decade to come. Washingtonis already taking plenty.

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David Ditch: Uncle Sam is picking your pocket with high taxes Democrats want to raise them even higher - Fox News

On a warm, hazy afternoon, supporters spilled out along the famed Venice boardwalk as Sanders, his back to the Pacific Ocean, thundered in his trademark rasp against the fossil fuel industry, drug companies, Wall Street and a "corrupt political system." As if sent by central casting, a seagull sat perched atop a streetlight high above Sanders' shoulder as he spoke.

But by this week, the leading Democrats in the 2020 field were all scheduled to return to their usual haunts in New Hampshire and especially Iowa, the states that have consumed the vast majority of their efforts this year. Compared to that sustained courtship, the visits to California looked more like a weekend fling.

The flicker of attention may have done more to underscore than alleviate California's perpetual frustration at being eclipsed in the presidential nominating process. California will award 415 pledged delegates to the Democratic convention next summer, far more than any state. History suggests it's likely that more than five million people will vote in the state's Democratic primary.

That will probably be least 20 times as many people -- and much as 25 times as many -- as vote in either Iowa or New Hampshire. California has more college students than Iowa or New Hampshire has adults aged 18 or older, and its Latino population alone is about triple the total population of both states together. And yet no one in California feels confident that the state will exert even a fraction of the influence over the outcome of the race than the two smaller, predominately white states that kick off the nominating process.

"We're definitely getting much more attention and not just for our money," said Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti in an interview. "People are doing real events and they are interacting with real people. I think it's absolutely forward progress, but we haven't arrived at a place where we are comfortable with the culture of asking and demanding from candidates enough and vice versa. I think California is still so big that it's confusing to a lot of campaigns."

Early, then late, then back again

For decades, no state has agonized more openly about how to magnify its influence over the presidential nominating process than California. In the search for more leverage, California over the past quarter century has shifted the date of its primary forward, back and then forward again. But each choice has left activists in the state frustrated at its inability to convert bulk into clout.

"Literally in the modern day, starting really in the '80s, California has not had influence no matter where it's been," says Mickey Kantor, a longtime Los Angeles-based Democratic strategist who managed Jerry Brown's 1976 national presidential campaign, ran Walter Mondale's 1984 effort in California and chaired Bill Clinton's 1992 national campaign.

Through the second half of the 20th century, California anchored a familiar position as the final lap of the primary marathon. After holding its primary in May from 1912 through 1944, the state in 1946 moved its primary for both the presidential and local contests to the first Tuesday in June. That's where the primary remained for the next 50 years, according to data provided by Bob Mulholland, the former longtime political director of the state Democratic Party.

This period provided the heyday of California's influence over the nominating process in both parties. It effectively sealed the Republican presidential nomination in 1964 when Barry Goldwater beat Nelson Rockefeller and the Democratic nomination in 1972 when George McGovern beat Hubert Humphrey. Robert F. Kennedy's win here in 1968 placed him on the cusp of the Democratic nomination until he was tragically assassinated on primary night at the Ambassador Hotel in Los Angeles.

But from the early 1970s to the 1990s, California in its June position was either an afterthought or an exclamation point on races that had been decided by the time the candidates arrived. Jimmy Carter twice lost here (to then-Gov. Jerry Brown in 1976 and Sen. Edward M. Kennedy in 1980), but that didn't stop him from claiming the Democratic nomination both times; likewise, Gary Hart's decisive victory over Mondale here in 1984 came too late to prevent the former vice president's nomination. Beyond the timing, California's influence was also diminished by the Democratic Party rules changes after 1972 that outlawed its previous practice of awarding all of the state's delegates to the statewide winner.

Frustrated by its eroding position, state political leaders in both parties engineered legislation that moved up the state's presidential primary to March 1996. The primary stayed in March through 2004 and then California in 2008 joined a procession of states that leapfrogged even earlier to February. "The catalyst for California moving early was nobody pays attention to us, but part two was: all these other states moved early so why can't we?" says Los Angeles based-Democratic strategist Bill Carrick, who has run Sen. Dianne Feinstein's campaigns in the state.

Restoring influence

The move to an earlier primary date restored some influence for California. George W. Bush's win here in the 2000 Republican primary helped him beat back the unexpected challenge from the late Arizona Sen. John McCain; in the 2008 Democratic primary, Hillary Clinton invested heavily in the state and routed Barack Obama by over 400,000 votes.

But even in those instances, the California outcome was just one drop in a nationwide cascade. In both those races, California was part of the bulging concentration of states that held their primaries on Super Tuesday. In Bush's case, California reinforced the results of the other major contests and effectively ended McCain's insurgency. But in the 2008 Democratic race, California blended into the crowd: though it was the largest prize on the board, press coverage emphasized that Obama won more of the 23 states that voted that day than Clinton did. And in fact, after Clinton's decisive California win, Obama beat her in the next 11 states that voted.

With Democrats disappointed again by their limited national influence, and state legislators unhappy with facing a primary so far before the general election, California then voted to move back its primary to June, where it was held in both 2012 and 2016. In 2016, Sanders barnstormed the state for weeks in what was probably the most sustained California presidential primary effort since Gary Hart in 1984. But Clinton had effectively clinched the nomination even before she won California, and the same was true for Mitt Romney in the GOP race in 2012.

Frustrated once more, the state legislature voted to shift the primary in 2020 back to March, when it will again jostle with the other 13 states (not to mention American Samoa) elbowing for influence on Super Tuesday. California offers more delegates than any of them, but its competitors include several other larger states (Texas, North Carolina, Virginia, Minnesota and Colorado) that the campaigns cannot ignore. Combined, the other Super Tuesday states will award more than twice as many delegates as California does, according to tabulations by the CNN political unit.

The realities of the 2020 calendar

That daunting map will pressure almost every Democratic campaign into difficult choices about which states to prioritize on Super Tuesday. Across such a sprawling battlefield, "It is hard to compete simultaneously in terms of dollars and people on the ground," says Kate Bedingfield, Biden's deputy campaign manager and communications director.

In fact, with most of the delegates in the Democratic race awarded based on the outcome in individual congressional districts, campaign strategists say they will be forced to target down to the local level. "Every campaign, including well-funded campaigns, are going to have to make hard choices on Super Tuesday," says Jeff Weaver, a senior adviser to Sanders.

Given those pressures, it's likely that California will be disappointed again in the amount of attention the candidates devote to it.

Sanders likely has California's most energetic grassroots organization. After his sustained campaigning here in 2016, he ran well in California, drawing about 46% against Clinton, nearly 2.4 million votes in all. As important, Weaver says, Sanders built a huge volunteer base that he is deploying again in 2020. Last weekend, Sanders' organizers knocked on about 25,000 doors across the state, Weaver said.

"No one can match that," he says, "and that number will ramp up considerably over the coming months."

The question in a state this big is whether any campaign can afford an organizing or advertising effort large enough to move a critical mass of voters, especially given how many other states will be demanding the candidates' attention at the same time. Many local observers believe that, instead, the results in California are likely to be heavily shaped by the results in the earlier states.

While many Californians vote by mail, and the first ballots will reach them between Iowa and New Hampshire next February, Mulholland says that typically 90% of all votes are cast either on Election Day or the 10 days preceding it. That means Californians will be voting precisely as the results emerge from the first contests of Iowa, New Hampshire, Nevada and particularly South Carolina, which will vote on February 29, just three days before the Super Tuesday states.

Once again, California appears more likely to be submerged in a political wave than to start one. That prospect highlights what many see as the flaw in California's calculations over the years. It has focused its search for influence in the nominating process on moving toward the head of the line. But apart from the four states that are granted the privileged position at the very front of the calendar, influence in the primaries has usually come not from being early; it has come from being alone.

States that have carved out a place on the calendar where they have little or no competition from other states -- like Wisconsin in early April or New York and Pennsylvania in late April -- have typically drawn sustained attention from the campaigns and proved influential in the outcome, even if they vote later. Whatever California decides next March, it will share the spotlight with over a dozen other states -- and given how long it usually takes California to count all of its ballots, its results may not be fully apparent until well after the primary cavalcade has rolled onto other contests. "Being on Super Tuesday is not meaningful to a state the size of California," says Carrick. "In fact, it diminishes your meaning."

Even as California revels in more attention from the 2020 Democratic field, it may be on track to learn that uncomfortable lesson again in the new year.

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The biggest state feels the most excluded in the Democratic race - CNN

Capitol Hill on Tuesday was a curiously static place. The impeachment of the President was just a day away, and yet there were no protests, for or against. A dense, gray-white bank of fog settled so low over the Capitol that it covered even the Statue of Freedom atop the building, making the Hill feel even more secluded and cut off. At their caucus meeting that morning the Democrats had only briefly discussed the impeachment vote. With a few known exceptions, the members of the House would vote with their parties. The mood was at once momentous and tension-free. The Democrats would vote to impeach the President, and the Republicans would vote against it. No one was trying to persuade, because persuasion seemed impossible.

Among the last Democrats to announce their support for impeachment was a group of seven freshmenthe national-security Democrats. All seven have records of intelligence or military service, and all of them won in 2018 in previously Republican districts. On September 23rd, the groupElaine Luria and Abigail Spanberger, of Virginia, Mikie Sherrill, of New Jersey, Gil Cisneros, of California, Chrissy Houlahan, of Pennsylvania, Jason Crow, of Colorado, and Elissa Slotkin, of Michiganjointly published an op-ed in the Washington Post, declaring that, if the allegations that President Trump solicited foreign interference in the 2020 election were correct, we believe these actions represent an impeachable offense. Their statement turned the Democrats decisively toward impeachment. The Speaker of the House, Nancy Pelosi, announced a formal impeachment inquiry the day after the op-ed was published; she has said that she began taking notes for her speech as she read the piece, on a plane to Washington.

The impeachment inquiry, as it unfolded, this fall, did not stray from the security Democrats concerns: it was not broadly about the Presidents corruption but narrowly about his efforts to pressure the Ukrainian government to help him win relection. The stars of last months impeachment hearings were foreign-policy professionalsMarie Yovanovitch, Fiona Hill, Alexander Vindman, William Taylor, George Kentwhose persistent work to keep Ukrainian democracy on track made for a poignant contrast with the Presidents personal emissaries flailing efforts to bend the government in Kyiv toward him. There was an obvious political advantage to leading with the national-security Democrats earnest and even quaint concerns, about duty and sacrifice and oaths. It was the Democrats best guess at the principles that they and their Republican colleagues might still share, when nothing else seemed to do the trick.

On Tuesday afternoon, I visited Crow at his Washington office. A forty-year-old lawyer who served three tours in Iraq and Afghanistan as a platoon leader in the 82nd Airborne, Crow conveys a serious, almost pained sense of responsibility. When he was asked on CNN this week what he would say to persuade Colorados Republican senator, Cory Gardner, Crow said that he would tell him to remember his oaths. There are some of my colleagues on the other side of the aisle who have service backgrounds, and Ive had conversations with them where Ive been very clear about what I think the right thing is to do for the country, he told me. It didnt sound like those conversations had established much common ground. The trouble was that were not operating off the same set of information anymore, Crow said. Im not going to be able to solve from my perch here the media challenge. It left him talking about shared sacrifice to only half of the country. Crow said, I do think, you know, long, long term, history will certainly treat those who do the right thing favorably. The long, long term sounded very far away.

The contrast between the chyron-assisted intensity of impeachment on the cable networks and the hushed atmosphere on the Hill this week suggested an event made for a television audience. Or, really, two television audiences, each with its own protagonists and themes. The divide between the two parties begins at the most basic, demographic levelninety per cent of House Republicans are white men, while, among Democrats, the figure is less than forty per centbut, during the final debate of impeachment on Wednesday, it appeared at every other level, too. Democrats talked sometimes about the facts of the Ukraine scandal, but more often about first principles like patriotism and democracy, while Republicans talked angrily about processthat it had been closed off and partisan from the outset, that the President had no chance to make his case. Interesting figures flattened into generic ones. Tom Cole, the veteran Republican congressman from Oklahoma, who wrote a doctoral thesis on a working-class enclave of London and spent much of his career fighting for the Native Americans in his home state, said that the process had been unfair and rushed. Representative Will Hurd, of Texasa former C.I.A. officer and a frequent Trump critic, and the lone black Republican in the Housewarned that Democrats were setting a dangerous precedent that risked turning impeachment into a weaponized political tool. Speaking times were as short as thirty seconds, so that none of the House members had time to respond to one anothers points.

Shortly before the vote, Steny Hoyer, the Democratic House Majority Leader, from Maryland, appealed directly to Republicans, urging them to recognize that the republic must defend itself. We have seen Republican courage throughout our history, from the Civil War to the Cold War, Hoyer said. Each man, each woman must look into their own soul. At times, some Republicans interrupted Hoyer by jeering. Obnoxious as that was, it also made an obvious point: the parties shared so little that Hoyers earnest efforts at outreach drifted into impossibly vague abstractions. Stay with your party and you had votes, donations, support for your favored initiatives. Break with it, and what was Hoyer offering? Just metaphysical stuff. An inner conviction of courage. Some satisfaction in your soul. The vote was a victory for Democrats, and an expression of their electoral triumph in the 2018 midterms, but it sounded as if they were grieving something, while Republicans were preparing for war.

Thursday in Washington, the last day before Congress left town for the holidays and the first with the President having been impeached, was clear and freezing. A frenetic series of votes was scheduledmost notably, on the U.S.M.C.A., the trade deal that would replace NAFTAwhich suggested a very different Congress than the one that had grown so entrenched and embittered about impeachment. In the midst of all this, I stopped by to see Representative Chrissy Houlahan, a former Air Force officer who represents a newly blue district outside of Philadelphia. Whats been really fascinating for a neophyte and a freshman like me is to see the kind of cognitive dissonance that happened here this week, she told me. The place was indisputably broken, and it was also, in a different sense, humming along just fine. Houlahan mentioned the bills that were passing that week, which included not only the U.S.M.C.A. but also tax reforms (which would help residents of wealthy blue states) and a $1.4 trillion spending package to avert a government shutdown. These are huge, huge things that have been peoples lifes work coming together, and in the middle of all that there was the impeachment vote, she said. Its kind of hard to contain in your brain all at one time.

When I interviewed several of the national-security Democrats in September, Id found Houlahan the most obviously distressed by the notion that the country was being torn apart. That remained true. Im just really alarmed by where weve devolved to as a people, and what behaviors are permissible, she told me on Thursday. But she also sounded like shed begun to accommodate herself to it.

I know that what I did in my vote and in my actions is hurtful. I know that it was divisive, she said, of impeachment. There would be long-term consequences, for the next Administration and for how will we pull ourselves together and trust each other, she said. But it had to happen, you know. I had to take this vote. It was my oath to do the right thing, to look at the evidence and to make a hard call.

An hour later, I met Representative Elaine Luria, a former Navy commander who won a formerly Republican seat in greater Virginia Beach. Thinking back over the fall, she said that it had seemed that it might be possible to persuade some Republicans to turn on the President. When Lieutenant Colonel Vindman spoke, I thought, This is going to be the day. You have an Army lieutenant colonel, wearing a Purple Heart, she said. How can anyone not take what he says at face value and respect his service and respect his physical sacrifice? Of course, that was not what had happened, as Republicans suggested that Vindman, who emigrated from Kyiv as a child, could have dual loyalty to Ukraine. Luria said, To see people attacking him, I just thought, My God, where have we sunk as a country?

Luria is a centrist. She belongs to three bipartisan caucuses, and she said that they tend to function pretty well. I guess whats confusing about it is a lot of people who are arguing against impeachment are just denying the facts, Luria said. Some people, in these hearings and in their public statements, have gone so far as to say a phone call didnt even happen. Thats absurd. Or, if a phone call happened, nothing was done wrong, he never asked Ukraine to investigate the Bidens. He said he did, his personal lawyer said he did, the transcript he released said he did, and he stood on the White House lawn and said, Ukraine, please investigate, and, while youre at it, China you should investigate, too. This is all public knowledge. She went on, And so whats incredibly confusing to me is how that has been an effective argument in compelling some peopleto say it didnt even happen.

This seemed to be where the long impeachment episode had left the new centrist Democrats: with the realization that, although their politics required Republican negotiating partners, they could only intermittently count on Republicans good faith. Last week, Luria had stood behind the President while he signed an executive order on anti-Semitism. During the impeachment hearing, she recounted that she had said, I stood with the President in the White House last week, but Im standing up to him in this House today. That sounds a little clich, but you only have one minute. Meanwhile, conservative groups were running ads targeting her on impeachment. I didnt think, like, Oh, my gosh, I cant do this because its risky for my relection, Luria said, of her vote for impeachment. I mean, no shit! She was grinning; this was just politics. Its risky for me in a Republican district, no matter whether this happened or not.

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The Political Education of the Security Democrats - The New Yorker

The Democrats are in disarray and face a number of problems winning the 2020 election. For starters, the Democratic presidential nomination process is highly fluid. In early primary and caucus states, no candidate has managed to sustain a lead over time. The criteria for qualifying for a debate slot and the debates themselves have hurt candidates and the party. The most moderate voices and lesser-funded candidates do not qualify for the debate stage.

At the debates, the media panelists goad candidates to attack each other. They dig up long-forgotten or controversial comments and challenge candidates to defend themselves. Candidates, to win attention, outdo each other in moving to the left or in making bold declarations on controversial issues such as Medicare for All.

Former Vice President Joe BidenJoe BidenPrimary debates threaten to leave people of color behind Longtime campaign aide vows Sanders will continue to combat political establishment as president 2019 in Photos: 35 pictures in politics MORE, the initial front-runner, has been an embarrassment. He is not a good debater, is inarticulate, seems to be confused and out of touch, and makes numerous gaffes.

Sen. Elizabeth WarrenElizabeth Ann Warren2019 in Photos: 35 pictures in politics Warren in Christmas tweet slams CBP for treatment of detainees Buttigieg surrogate: Impeachment is 'literally a Washington story' MORE (D-Mass.) and Sen. Bernie SandersBernie SandersLongtime campaign aide vows Sanders will continue to combat political establishment as president 2019 in Photos: 35 pictures in politics Buttigieg surrogate: Impeachment is 'literally a Washington story' MORE (I-Vt.) have staked out far-left positions and have minimal support outside of progressive Democrats. South Bend, Ind., Mayor Pete ButtigiegPeter (Pete) Paul ButtigiegBloomberg has already spent 0 million on ads in presidential race Buttigieg surrogate: Impeachment is 'literally a Washington story' Buttigieg campaign introduces contest for lowest donation MORE has limited recognition and support among blue-collar and minority Democratic voting blocs.

Former New York City Mayor Mike Bloomberg, noting the disarray in the Democratic field, has entered the contest. He wisely refuses to get sucked into the early primary and caucus battles. He is actively campaigning, counting on doing well in early March's Super Tuesday primaries, where one-third of the convention delegates are at stake.

The Democrats should be wary of the Jeremy Corbyn-Labour Party effect: A socialist-focused agenda and failure to confront anti-Semitism in the party is a losing strategy.

Another problem Democratic candidates face is the impeachment process. Impeachment has become a partisan political brawl. It has not gained support among Republican voters, who are strongly opposed, or among independent voters, who are evenly divided on its appropriateness. Recent Politico-Morning Consult polling shows overall support for impeachment barely breaking the 50 percent range. Further, polls of voters in battleground states revealed that impeachment is unpopular there.

Without broad-based support, impeachment will backfire on the Democrats. It will hurt their 2020 presidential election prospects. The Republican-controlled Senate will surely acquit. President TrumpDonald John TrumpGermans think Trump is more dangerous to world peace than Kim Jong Un and Putin: survey Trump jokes removal of 'Home Alone 2' cameo from Canadian broadcast is retaliation from 'Justin T' Trump pushed drug cartel policy despite Cabinet objections: report MORE will claim vindication and victory and be in a better position to win the 2020 Electoral College vote.

Many Democratic strategists are engaged in magical thinking. They seem to believe that ascendant voters 18- to 24-year olds, millennials, younger single women, minorities and people of color will march en masse into the voting booths and support the Democratic presidential candidate. Past voting patterns do not support this scenario. Ascendant voters are fickle and are likely to either not vote at all or support third-party candidates.

Most troubling for the Democrats is the abandonment of the non-college-educated, blue-collar working class,whichhas always been a faithful and key voting bloc. Many Democrats disparageits more traditional social and cultural outlook. Democrats lecture these voters about lifelong learning, STEM education, preparing for the new global economy, innovation, and entrepreneurship. This attitude, as illustrated by the 2016 Hillary ClintonHillary Diane Rodham ClintonChelsea Clinton thanks GOP congressman for tweet depicting her father's 'quick reflexes' Some kids will spend Christmas in border cages Michael Moore: Sanders can beat Trump in 2020 MORE candidacy, taints the partys presidential prospects. It must be avoided by the current crop of candidates.

Most Democrats have turned away from the concerns of working-class voters loss of livable-wage jobs to globalization and unfair trade arrangements. Instead, the candidates take on a global citizen perspective, playing into the Trump nationalist narrative. Biden, Sanders and Warren are courting union members with promises of wage increases for lower-wage employees, not the creation or return of high-wage employment.

Impeachment does not appear to be an effective tool for Democrats. The ascendant voters have not yet ascended in sufficient numbers. Candidates have not as yet appealed to the traditional working-class Democratic base. What are the Democrats to do?

Whoever the nominee, he or she needs to build a realistic winning coalition that includes the formerly dependable non-college-educated blue-collar voters. Also, they need to focus on winning the key battleground states of Wisconsin, Michigan, Minnesota, Ohio, Pennsylvania, New Hampshire, Arizona, Florida, North Carolina.

This will entail a careful balance a more moderate tone, an empathetic embrace of the working class and a progressive agenda for those ascendant voters who do go to the polls. A Democratic victory is possible. But so far, it is not looking likely. The alternative: four more years of the Trump presidency.

Joshua Sandman, Ph.D., is a professor of political science at the University of New Haven. He has studied the presidency for more than five decades.

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Democrats in disarray: 2020 election at risk | TheHill - The Hill

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House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer (D-Md.) in some regards might be considered the second most powerful Democrat in the country right now. He is second-in-command in the chamber behind Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi, and he was given a primetime speaking slot before last week's vote to impeach President Trump. Yet Hoyer is also about to become the latest prominent Democrat to face a serious primary challenge.

The House leadership is simply not cutting the mustard, Hoyer's challenger, McKayla Wilkes, told The Week in an interview. A young black woman from a working-class background, she says current party leaders are out of touch with the country and their own districts. "Hoyer and Pelosi are leading the party badly," she said, "because they're taking tons of corporate money, not standing up to Trump, and they're not championing crucial ideas like Medicare-for-all and the Green New Deal."

Wilke's challenge is rightly seen as part of a growing leftist insurgency within the Democratic Party. If she manages to knock off Hoyer, it might be the strongest signal yet that the movement is winning the battle for the future of the party.

To be sure, party leadership was always going to be a challenge after Democrats won control of the House in 2018. The rise of Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren has demonstrated that the party's previous moderate consensus has fractured. There is a large appetite from progressive voters for more confrontational, left-wing politics, particularly among younger people, a sentiment which is only growing as Millennials reach early middle age and Generation Z reaches voting age. It was these voters who largely propelled the victories of fresh faces like Reps. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Rashida Tlaib.

And yet, the House leadership including Hoyer, which essentially holds institutional control of the party so long as President Trump remains in office, has done little to capitalize on this movement. Instead, they treat the left wing much as they did in the 1990s: as annoying gadflies to be ignored whenever possible.

Instead of a full-bore attack on Trump, they opted for a narrow impeachment focused solely on the Ukraine scandal and only after dragging their feet for months. Instead of locking Rudy Giuliani, John Bolton, or Mike Pompeo in the House basement to force them to testify, they proceeded with the impeachment vote without hearing from some of the central conspirators. And they have largely ignored Trump's wildly corrupt and unconstitutional profiteering off the presidency, not including it in the impeachment inquiry or any other major investigative hearing.

Their legislative priorities have also been less than bold. They passed a trade deal with Mexico and Canada that allows Trump to claim victory in his favorite policy area. And while they have passed a number of messaging bills that Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell promptly bottled up, even there the leadership has stymied the left. House leadership froze out progressives from negotiation over a bill to ostensibly lower drug prices, pushing a weak version that included one absolutely loony provision that would increase drug costs outside of Medicare so that program could get more money. That was removed only when the Congressional Progressive Caucus threatened to vote against the bill.

This brings me back to Hoyer's home turf, Maryland's 5th District. It is a very comfortably blue area: In every election since 1998, none of Hoyer's various Republican opponents got over 36 percent of the vote. Yet Hoyer is squarely in the middle of the Democratic caucus, and on its right in some areas he voted for the Iraq War, is a firm partisan of Israel, voted for Wall Street deregulation in 2000, and voted to give China permanent normal trade relations that same year.

All these are major reasons why Wilkes is running. "My vision of the Democratic Party is a party that doesn't take corporate money and instead of triangulating to reach 2 percent of swing voters, does a ton of organizing to reach people who don't normally vote."

Her campaign is also about specific Maryland concerns on which Hoyer has failed to deliver. Wilkes supports a massive program of 7 million new social housing units not just because her district has a severe housing affordability problem, but because "I have friends, actually, who live in the woods in an abandoned school bus," she says. She supports sweeping criminal justice reform not just because of the mass incarceration crisis, but because she has personal experience with the Kafkaesque prison bureaucracy, having once been jailed without bail for the ridiculously piddling offense of driving on a suspended license. She supports Medicare-for-all not just because it is good policy, but because she personally knows "people struggling with long-term care, preventative care, and drug prices." Wilkes supports the Green New Deal not just because of climate change in general, but because her district's coastal communities are under dire threat from rising sea levels. "In Anne Arudnel County, in St. Mary's County, people are concerned about the level of the sea rise. People have homes that are on the water," she says. "It's actually amazing that we haven't been wiped out by a massive flood, because there are parts of Maryland that are surrounded by water."

World greenhouse gas emissions reached yet another record high in 2019. Neither the 5th District nor the country as a whole can afford more Democratic Party dithering as happened during the Obama years, with minor subsidies for renewables coupled to an epic fracking binge that made the U.S. the biggest producer of oil and gas in the world.

It's a bit hard to understand the mindset of the Democratic leadership. Age is certainly one factor. Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi (who has a primary challenger herself in attorney Shahid Buttar) is 79 years old. Hoyer is 80. Majority Whip Jim Clyburn is 77. At that age, it's rather common to get stuck in one's ways.

But it's not the whole story. Bernie Sanders, the most famous leader of left-wing Democrats, is 78. Elizabeth Warren is 70. Clearly being old in itself is no barrier to progressive politics or to being enormously popular among young people. No, the issue with Pelosi and company is not their age so much as how long they have been in politics, and particularly how long they have been at the top of the party.

Both Hoyer and Pelosi were elected in the 1980s, and both have been in and out of various House leadership positions for decades. Top Democrats of this generation internalized the Reagan revolution believing that the New Deal was dead and buried, that capitalism is basically good, and that America is an unalterably center-right country. Hence left-wing candidates always lose (1980, 1984, 1988, 2000, 2004, and 2016 notwithstanding) and the best that be done for the American people are fiddly tax credits and janky market-friendly schemes like ObamaCare. And while it is always possible for someone to change their mind, the top House Democrats plainly have no intention of doing so.

The only way to change direction, it seems, is to knock the leadership out of their individual seats, and put in some fresh folks with fighting spirit. A leader can't "be a leader in just name only. You have to be a leader and actions have to show that. We have to be bold and we have to be brave," says Wilkes. Leadership is about "sticking your neck out there for the people who actually elected you." Her primary is April 28.

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Democratic leadership should be afraid of McKayla Wilkes - The Week