For a change, we're not going begin with Trump's idiocies-of-the-week. After the whole shutdown fiasco, Trump's had a (relatively) quiet week, so we're instead going to focus on what's going on with Democrats first, and then just quickly itemize Trump's flailing later on.

The biggest news on the Democratic side of the aisle -- as it will be from now until at least the spring of 2020 -- is the presidential contest. The race is getting bigger, as more and more people toss their chapeaux into the ring.

Today's news is that Senator Cory Booker is running. Precisely nobody was surprised at this development. Earlier in the week, Kamala Harris kicked off her campaign in pretty spectacular fashion (more on this later). For those keeping score at home, this means at least four senators will be running: Booker, Harris, Kirsten Gillibrand, and Elizabeth Warren. This list is, however, expected to grow soon, as Bernie Sanders seems on the brink of joining the race.

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There's something new in the air in Democratic politics, or at the very least something old that is now getting a whole lot more attention now than it has in a long time. Nothing shows the pivot in the Democratic Party away from Clintonian centrism (or corporatism) back to the party's workingman roots as much as the newfound eagerness to tax the rich. So far, the only real disagreements among Democrats are how to tax the rich, not over whether they should be taxed more at all. This is a sea-change from what the party stood for back in the 1990s, when being "business-friendly" was something Democratic politicians strove for.

Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez sparked this whole discussion with her proposal to create new marginal income rates at the top of the income scale, which would go as high as 70 percent for the top earners. She rather brilliantly explained that this would not affect almost everyone else, by stating that "only your ten-millionth dollar and above would be taxed at 70 percent." Republicans love to muddy the waters by scaring everyone into thinking that all income would be taxed at the highest rate, but this just isn't true. And, as many have been pointing out, the American economy ran just fine in the 1950s and 1960s when the top marginal rates were sometimes as high as 90 percent. Taxing the rich doesn't equate to the economy grinding to a halt, in other words, no matter how much Republicans try to convince everyone that this would automatically be the case.

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OK, we've reached the crunch time, so I have to warn everyone that strange things may be happening to the site in the next few hours. If the whole thing blows up, then I'll reset it back for the whole weekend, and it should appear fine (although there may be a few hours today when it is unavailable -- keep trying, it'll eventually right itself), and we'll try again on Monday.

If everything goes smoothly in the next few hours, then I'll be able to write a column today and post it. No guarantees, though -- if I'm debugging, then I won't have the time.

Again, thanks for everyone's patience during the upgrade process.

-- Chris Weigant

Follow Chris on Twitter: @ChrisWeigant

There will be no new column today, sorry. For the next two days, this site will be undergoing a technical upgrade, which should (knock wood) be completely transparent to you. However, it is an extensive operation, so I can't make any promises.

Best case scenario is that you don't notice any changes and experience no interruptions in service. Worst case scenario is that the site somehow goes dark and you get an error message when trying to access it. In-between scenario is that there will be minor and very limited interruptions in service, hopefully not lasting more than a few minutes at the most. Also a possibility is that we may lose either whole columns (from this point forward, until roughly Friday) or individual comments as the database is moved around. So be prepared for gremlins on the site for the next few days, in other words.

Again, this is only a technical upgrade. The site will remain the same afterwards. I know the site needs its own upgrade in user interface and functionality, but that will have to wait for another day, sorry.

Since there will be no column today, here's what I would have written about today, if I had the time: the Democrats' H.R. 1 bill in the House is finally getting some notice, due to Mitch McConnell saying on the Senate floor that the provision for making Election Day a national federal holiday would somehow be a "power grab" for Democrats. Imagine that -- making voting easier for everyone is somehow a "power grab." This could be a very potent political issue going forward for the Democrats, as it very obviously puts them on the side of making voting easier while Republicans are left defending the proposition that voting should be as difficult as possible (for their own partisan benefit). You can just imagine what I'd have to say about that! Which, unfortunately, you'll have to, because with the upgrade, I won't be able to write it all out.

For the next few days, please let me know either in the comments or via email if you're having any problems with the site. Although my email may also be affected, just to warn everyone in advance. Let's hope for the best and hope that by Friday everything will be smoothly up and running once again without any interruptions. Thank you all for your patience in the meantime.

-- Chris Weigant

Follow Chris on Twitter: @ChrisWeigant

We're barely through the first month of 2019 and the 2020 presidential race is already heating up. The biggest news this week came from the flirtation of former Starbucks C.E.O. Howard Schultz with an independent run. This has caused much consternation on the left, because most Democrats see a Schultz independent bid as nothing short of a spoiler effort which may put Donald Trump back in the White House for another four years. Personally, I'm not so sure the electoral equation would be that simple, though.

Schultz, apparently not knowing the history of the term, says he is counting on a "silent majority" to propel him to victory. As with Roger Stone's recent "V-for-victory" pose in front of a courthouse, one has to wonder whether Richard Nixon is really the best person to be borrowing political imagery from these days (or "ever," for that matter). Schultz is reasoning that there are so many independent voters out there that they'll all flock to him and he'll split the two major parties down the middle. This is quite likely a fantasy, of course, since the Electoral College is what determines presidential elections, not the outcome of the popular vote.

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Denial, as the punny saying goes, is not just a river in Egypt. President Donald Trump seems to still be floating down De Nile, however, oblivious to the world of reality around him. This isn't exactly a crisis yet, but it certainly will become a lot more noticeable as time goes by.

In 2010, Barack Obama sheepishly admitted -- in person, while giving a press conference (those were the days, eh?) -- that he had gotten "shellacked" in the midterm elections. Previous to that, George W. Bush admitted to a similar midterm "thumping." Donald Trump experienced the same phenomenon -- losing more House seats to Democrats than had happened since the days of Watergate -- and he proclaimed it was a great victory for him because he had managed to pick up two Senate seats (the only bright spot in an election full of bad news for Republicans nationwide). Great pyramids seemingly floated by in a haze in the background.

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President Donald Trump's government shutdown became only the second-biggest media story this morning, after the news broke of an early-morning raid that wound up with the arrest of Roger Stone on charges of obstruction and witness-tampering. Bob Mueller's investigation just caught another witch, in other words. Trump, of course, can't stand to see (1) news about Mueller, and (2) any television news story that isn't all about him, so he immediately decided to make even bigger news, by caving completely on the shutdown and handing Nancy Pelosi exactly what she's been demanding all along.

You have to hand it to him, because Trump's ploy worked. It guaranteed that the number one news story today was not about Mueller, but rather about Trump's abject failure to get anything at all from his 35-day government-shutdown temper tantrum. Pelosi won. Trump lost. It's impossible to spin it any other way. We have not yet heard the reaction from the right-wing news media (Ann Coulter, we're looking in your direction...), but it is sure to be entertaining.

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A scant few months ago, the topic du jour at the Washington cocktail parties was whether Nancy Pelosi would even become the next speaker of the House. Maybe a revolt-from-within would take her down. She was seen as (pick one): too old, too weak to fight Trump effectively, too centrist, or too squishy when the going got tough. These arguments now seem laughable, but an outsized amount of attention was paid to them in the punditocracy, and not all that long ago. Is anyone now still wondering whether Pelosi can effectively take on Trump, or whether her age precludes her from being an effective Democratic leader?

Pelosi just won a symbolic victory over the president, after Trump backed down last night and agreed to Pelosi's demand that the State Of The Union speech be postponed until after the government has reopened. Trump caved, to put it plainly, and Pelosi emerged victorious. This was a small victory, to be sure (it is of little comfort to the 800,000-plus who still aren't being paid), but it was a clear victory nonetheless.

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That headline is a little acronym-heavy, so allow me to spell it out: the President Of The United States is locked in a battle of wills with the Speaker Of The House over the State Of The Union speech. How this all ends is anyone's guess, since it is nothing more than a side drama in the grand government-shutdown Kabuki theater we're all now trapped within. So far, it looks like Nancy Pelosi has the upper hand in the standoff, but you never really know what Donald Trump is going to do next, so it's anyone's guess precisely what is going to happen next Tuesday night.

How we got here: early this month, Pelosi sent Trump the traditional (but informal) invitation to speak to a joint session of Congress on January 29. But then the shutdown did not get resolved. So Pelosi sent a letter to Trump suggesting that he either (1) postpone the State Of The Union speech until the government was open once again, or (2) deliver his speech in written form. Trump reacted this week by attempting to bluff his way through, stating that he would be showing up on Tuesday night as if everything were normal. However, to hold a speech in front of a joint session of Congress requires a resolution pass in both houses beforehand, and Pelosi stated she was not going to bring up any such resolution until the government reopened. She clarified this stance in a letter sent to Trump today. Trump subsequently backed down (or at least it seems so at the moment), and said he would give his speech at an "alternative" event, without specifying what that would mean, exactly.

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Democratic presidential hopefuls (both announced and not-yet-announced) are already beginning to define their candidacies in their speeches. The field is going to be so large this time around that they'll all be searching for ways to stand out from the pack. Many basic Democratic agenda items will be very similar from candidate to candidate, making nuanced differences all that separates them. Two of these candidates -- one announced, one not -- took the occasion of Martin Luther King Junior Day yesterday to explicitly call for a constitutional amendment guaranteeing the right to vote. This is a much more potent political issue than most folks who reside inside the Beltway realize, and it may just become a dealbreaker issue for the presidential field.

Many are unaware that the U.S. Constitution does not explicitly guarantee the right to vote. While a full seven out of the 17 amendments ratified since the Bill of Rights do deal with voting rights in one way or another (such as granting the franchise to women and to 18-year-olds), there is no actual phrase or amendment within the Constitution that simply says that every citizen has the right to vote.

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