It is not a good thing that the 2020 presidential election is already showing signs of encroaching idiocy. It is not a good sign that the elite political press already is demonstrating that it has learned absolutely, 100 percent jack-squat from its demonstrable malpractice in 2016. This should be no surprise. The elite political press learned nothing from its previous exercises in demonstrable malpractice. Of course, this time around, there likely will not be a Clinton to kick around, so there will have to be some adjustments in the old playbook.

It also is not a good thing that the Democratic Party seems to have learned even less from what happened a little over two years ago. For example, over the past few days, or ever since Beto O'Rourke took a meeting with Barack Obama, there appears to be a concerted effort from the Bernie Sanders camp to paint O'Rourke as a tool of the oil and gas industry based on his Texas Senate campaign's acceptance of individual contributions from members of that industry. That this comes on the heels of the Sanders Foundation's hootenanny up in Burlington is no accident. There is an obvious effort by those folks to clear the progressive side of the field as cleanly as Hillary Rodham Clinton attempted to clear the field in 2016—an effort, it should be recalled, that was one of Sanders's primary arguments against her.

Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders tussle at a 2016 Democratic primary debate. Scott Olson Getty Images

I have no idea whether O'Rourke will be a presidential candidate, and even less of an idea whether he'd be a good one. The run he made against Ted Cruz, and the coalition of supporters that his campaign constructed, was damned impressive for a heretofore obscure member of Congress from the deserts of East Jesus, Texas. But that's not a presidential campaign. What I do know is that there is something a bit malodorous about the notion that he somehow has let down the progressive ballclub because of some entries on his FEC form—or, worse, that he is some kind of extraction industry mole.

Similar objections have been raised against...checks notes...Kamala Harris, Cory Booker, and Deval Patrick, the latter of whom recently announced that he wasn't running, and whose announcement of that fact was surrounded by stories painting him as a tool of the subprime mortgage industry. They will get around to almost anyone who isn't an Independent senator from Vermont. (Watch carefully as Amy Klobuchar goes into the barrel for not supporting Medicare For All and/or abolishing ICE. It's coming.) And, of course, it is the young people who will save us all, if we just get behind a septuagenarian independent senator from Vermont.

Kirsten Gillibrand and Kamala Harris, two possible 2020 contenders. Michael Kovac Getty Images

Clearing the field was a terrible idea at the time, and it looks even worse in retrospect. It was a terrible idea in 2016 and it will be a terrible idea in 2020. It's a terrible idea no matter how pure its motives or for whom the field is being cleared. And allowing someone who isn't even a Democrat to clear a huge chunk of the Democratic primary field is completely crazy. Alarm bells are ringing loudly that the Sanders campaign of 2016 has fully transformed into the Sanders cult of 2020.

And then, there's the elite political media. The New York Times fired a shot across the bow of Senator Professor Warren's prospective campaign on Thursday by raising, yet again, the moronic issue of her ancestry in the guise of discussing whether her having taken a DNA test was savvy politics or not in the context of 2020.

Just covering the controversy, doncha know?

But nearly two months after Ms. Warren released the test results and drew hostile reactions from prominent tribal leaders, the lingering cloud over her likely presidential campaign has only darkened. Conservatives have continued to ridicule her. More worrisome to supporters of Ms. Warren’s presidential ambitions, she has yet to allay criticism from grass-roots progressive groups, liberal political operatives and other potential 2020 allies who complain that she put too much emphasis on the controversial field of racial science — and, in doing so, played into Mr. Trump’s hands.

Elizabeth Warren Chip Somodevilla Getty Images

Advisers close to Ms. Warren say she has privately expressed concern that she may have damaged her relationships to Native American groups and her own standing with progressive activists, particularly those who are racial minorities. Several outside advisers are even more worried: They say they believe a plan should be made to repair that damage, possibly including a strong statement of apology.

Ah, the always savvy anonymous Advisers. Dear god in heaven. And, of course, there is the usual Bad Advice Fairy hollering suggestions from the peanut gallery.

“The biggest risk in engaging a bully is that bullies don’t usually stop, regardless of what the truth is,” said Charles Chamberlain, executive director for the progressive political group Democracy for America. Mr. Chamberlain’s group had, in 2014, launched a “Run Warren Run” campaign to encourage her to seek the 2016 presidential nomination. “When you can’t win an argument,” he added, “then sometimes it’s not worth having that argument.”

Former President John Kerry was apparently unavailable for comment.

(Have Chamberlain and DFA moved along from Warren to shill for the Sanders camp? By a magnificent coincidence, yes, they have.)

What concerns me more about this story is the unmistakable hint that the DNA "issue," which has no demonstrable salience in the general electorate that I can detect, is on its way to becoming to one of the Times's quadrennial Democratic obsessions, like Whitewater, Al Gore's "lies," and, most notably, Her E-Mailz. It is not a good thing for someone who writes about politics to already hate an election still almost two years away. But I'm getting there.

Update (4:27 p.m.): Late Thursday, the editorial board of the Boston Globe, which is ever sensitive to the possibility that some crackpot will yell about it on the radio, chimed in with some advice to SPW that seems to these eyes to be ... premature.

Warren missed her moment in 2016, and there’s reason to be skeptical of her prospective candidacy in 2020. While Warren won reelection, her margin of victory in November suggests there’s a ceiling on her popularity; Governor Baker garnered more votes than her in a state that is supposed to be a Democratic haven. Meanwhile, a September poll indicated that Massachusetts voters were more enthusiastic about Patrick making a White House bid than Warren.

Those are warning signs from the voters who know her best. While Warren is an effective and impactful senator with an important voice nationally, she has become a divisive figure. A unifying voice is what the country needs now after the polarizing politics of Donald Trump.

Yes, because, in 2018, it's time to draw hard and fast conclusions about where things will be in the middle of winter two years from now—especially from data showing that she is six entire points behind in a speculative comparison with a former governor who isn't even running any more.

But the real howler is in those last two lines. SPW has become "a divisive figure." By what standard? Is she a lightning rod? Yes. Is that necessarily a bad thing? Only if you're a fainting-couch Democrat who thinks that the key is finding a "unifying voice," as though the prion-disease-addled Republican Party will be wooed by anyone with a D after their name, and as though the "polarizing politics" in question began with Donald Trump. This is just stupid.

This post has been updated.

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Charles P. Pierce Charles P Pierce is the author of four books, most recently Idiot America, and has been a working journalist since 1976.

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