In my opinion piece “The Central Question of the 2020 Election”, I suggested that,
“… the 2020 election boils down to a simple question. Should we continue the process of bringing outsiders into Washington DC to change the infrastructure of government and wrestle it away from the Beltway establishment? Or should we return control of the country to the Washington DC elites?”
If one buys into that hypothesis, the logical thing we should be doing is demanding every candidate for office in the November election explain whether they stand with the ranks of the outsiders or are they allies of the establishment?
And we shouldn’t be content to ask for just a simple answer. We should be asking these candidates tough questions about what it is they intend to be held accountable for changing when they get to D.C. For instance,
Which federal agencies to they intend to overhaul and how?
What social, economic, military and foreign policies to they intend to realign and exactly what are the complex steps they in tend to do to get from their pie in the sky platitudes to real results?
Knowing that partisan gridlock is the single most debilitating thing that retards our government, exactly what are their plans to reach across the aisle and form constructive coalitions so we don’t see failure to launch partisan votes in Congress over and over again. Specifically, every candidate should be challenged to name who it is they can work with not just in their own party, but in the opposition party as well.
We need to make it clear that we don’t want another four years of gridlock and that, by November 3rd, we the People will know whether they are true outsiders going to Washington or just another Establishment hack.
There are nuances to the finer points of what an outsider is. I recently discusses the question of how I look at asking who is and who isn’t a D.C. outsider with my friend actress Kelly Carlson. We recorded it on video.
