Bernie Sanders made some news today as he unveiled his most recent version of a "Medicare For All" bill in the Senate. Notably, four of his competitors for the Democratic presidential nomination in the Senate signed on to his bill (this is notable because normally this wouldn't happen -- normally each candidate would put out their own version and argue that theirs was superior to all the other candidates' efforts). Sanders has long been a champion of single-payer health care, of course, and his is the strongest voice on the issue mostly because he almost singlehandedly pushed it to the fore in the Democratic Party. Four years ago, it was considered (sneeringly, by most "serious" Democrats) to be "too radical" an idea to ever happen. Now, it is so mainstream within the Democratic Party that each presidential candidate is measured by whether they support Medicare For All, or merely some weaker or more incremental version. That is a sea-change, and one that Bernie should rightfully be proud of.

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It's time once again to take a look at the emerging 2020 Democratic presidential field. Those of you who sneer at horserace columns would be advised to just skip today's offering altogether, we should point out right up front. And as usual, we have some new candidates and some updates on the current horde of hopefuls.

We've refined our ever-changing column format this time around, adding a "campaign news" segment at the start, followed by the three tiers of candidates and then some conclusions. This format may endure, or it may get tweaked further as the race develops, but for now it'll have to do.

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Before attempting to draw any comparisons or contrasts between Bernie Sanders and the rest of the 2020 Democratic presidential field, what I find rather ironic is to compare his second bid for the White House to two of the candidates from last time around: Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump. Because, whether he likes it or not, Sanders is now close to occupying the position that Clinton held the last time around, and (if he's lucky) he might just follow the path Trump charted in the 2016 race.

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As I wrote about yesterday, the Democratic 2020 presidential field is getting bigger all the time. With so many viable candidates running, it's getting tougher and tougher for each one of them to stand out in any appreciable way. Most of the attention in the media so far has focused on rather superficial traits about the candidates (this is nothing new, I should mention), but that doesn't mean that substantive policy proposals aren't being put forward. So today I'd like to zero in one on particular candidate who seems to be proposing some of the boldest ideas in the field (at least for now). Because whatever else you may think of her, Elizabeth Warren has certainly staked out a few cutting-edge positions.

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It's time once again to cast our eyes over the ever-expanding Democratic 2020 presidential field, and as has been the case so far, we've got new commitments from a few more notable names to add into the mix. Oh, and one meta-addition, as the Democratic National Committee has now announced that Milwaukee, Wisconsin will be where the 2020 convention will be held -- which means that no matter who is nominated, we won't be able to say "if they'd only gone to Wisconsin..." this time around. So there's that, at least.

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President Donald Trump just got humiliated three times in the same week. By his own party. Could this be a trend? One would certainly like to think so, but that may be premature (or overly optimistic).

Of course, it's debatable whether Trump can even be humiliated, because it's tough to humiliate someone who does not know the meaning of the word humility. You can call Trump many things (and we often do), but "humble" certainly isn't one of them.

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It has been a rather astonishing 24 hours in Congress. Last night, the Senate passed a bill which would force President Donald Trump to end American involvement in the war Saudi Arabia is fighting in Yemen, by a healthy margin of 54-46. Today, they followed this rebuke by passing the House bill to rescind Trump's "national emergency" declaration of a non-emergency on the southern border by an even-more-astonishing margin of 59-41. The House, not to be outdone, then unanimously passed (420-0) a resolution demanding that Special Counsel Robert Mueller's eventual report to the attorney general be made public. That's a whole lot of presidential rebuke for one single day, you've got to admit. And a whole lot of Republicans voting against a president of their own party.

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This week, the political party in control of the White House and the Senate is going to have a vicious intraparty fight over a broad constitutional issue. Last week, Democrats in the House unanimously passed a resolution condemning hate, and 23 Republicans astonishingly voted against it. Democrats stayed absolutely united in their fight against Trump's border wall funding during the longest shutdown in U.S. history, and they've remained united in the House to pass the first gun control measure in decades and the strongest elections and governmental ethics reform package since Watergate. Democrats have only held power in the House for a little over two months, and yet they've stayed absolutely unified to accomplish these major achievements. In the presidential race, it's actually pretty hard to differentiate between the announced Democratic candidates, because their platforms are all so similar that they defy attempts to find much daylight between them.

So, of course, it must be time for all the inside-the-Beltway pundits to dust off one of their most favorite tropes: "Democrats in disarray!" Because, obviously, they have run out of all other things to cover and all other possible story ideas.

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President Donald Trump, as we all know, is a big fan of walls. Big, beautiful walls, according to him. But although he's never gotten Mexico to pony up a single peso for his border wall, and is still having trouble convincing Congress that it's the right thing to do, when future historians look back on this week, they might mark it as when Trump began constructing a metaphorical wall between his administration and Congress. Because the first big block of stone was just deposited on the White House lawn -- with 81 more big stone blocks waiting in the wings.

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Even though they haven't gotten nearly enough credit in the mainstream media so far, House Democrats are doing a pretty good job of "walking and chewing gum at the same time." They are investigating Donald Trump and everyone around him, as they were elected to do; but they are also producing some pretty impressive and forward-thinking legislative efforts as well. Their problem, though, is achieving much success in getting this message out in the media. What with Donald Trump's incessant tweeting and the presidential race beginning to take shape, the political media -- not the Democrats -- are the ones who seemingly can't manage to masticate and perambulate simultaneously.

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