Welcome to Houston, Democrats.

Eight of you are bringing your presidential campaigns to Texas for the She the People forum at Texas Southern University on Wednesday afternoon. Sen. Bernie Sanders will also hold a rally at 5 p.m.

We’re glad you’re here. For too long, Democratic candidates who lack roots here have treated Texas as an afterthought. Three years ago, Hillary Clinton held Donald Trump to just 52 percent of the vote, and last November former Rep. Beto O’Rourke — welcome back, Beto — came even closer to beating Sen. Ted Cruz.

We take y’all being here as proof you recognize changes are afoot in Texas. You’re also smart enough to see enormous troves of Democratic votes exist here in America’s fourth-largest and most diverse city.

But now that we’ve said howdy, let’s get to the barbecue: What will you say when you step on stage at 1 p.m.? What options will you give voters looking for an alternative to President Trump in 2020? How effective will you be in firing up Democrats to win the base? How much gas will you leave in your tank when it comes time to woo moderates and others who could just as easily stay home or vote Republican?

There are now nearly 20 candidates vying for the Democratic nomination, and Democrats are only just now getting a feel for the range of ideas you will put on the table.

Fortunately, things may be accelerating, judging by the audacious, and immediately controversial, position staked out by Sen. Elizabeth Warren, the Massachusetts liberal who’ll be at Wednesday’s forum. She unveiled a plan to forgive hundreds of billions of dollars in student loan debt and make free college universally available.

She’s proposing $50,000 of student debt be canceled for every person in a householdwhose total income is less than $100,000, and smaller relief for those living in households with incomes up to $250,000.

Right away, of course, the idea was struck with a thousand arrows of outrage. Who will pay for it? Why is it fair to those who’ve already paid their loans? What is this, Russia?

Those questions are all fair. We expect them to keep coming and not just from Trump supporters. What pushback will Warren’s Democratic challengers offer? What new ideas will they push? And who will be bold enough to argue in 2020 that a Democratic victory requires a return to the comparative moderation of the Obama-era?

To be fair to Warren, who noted she attended University of Houston when tuition was $50 per semester, she does claim her proposal can be paid for through a 2 percent annual tax on the 75,000 families in the country worth at least $50 million.

“For decades,” she wrote in an article describing her plan Monday, “we’ve allowed the wealthy to pay less while burying tens of millions of working Americans in education debt. It’s time to make different choices.”

Is America ready for that kind of wealth redistribution? Maybe, maybe not. But shouldn’t we get busy talking about it? We hope the Democrats test as broad a range of bold ideas as possible. Lord knows, this country has challenges and providing a wide range of ideas is the only way to give Americans a chance to think through all the options for digging our way of out some nearly intractable problems.

All we know about the future is it won’t look like the present. Automation alone is set to transform our economy in ways we’ve only just begun to discuss. What will ideas like universal basic income look like then? Has mass incarceration run its course? Are we ever going to get serious about rising sea levels, melting polar caps or increasingly dangerous and unpredictable weather?

Hadn’t we better at least talk about those things?

If Trump is on the ticket in 2020, it’s a safe bet that these things won’t be on his party’s agenda.

Whether they’ll be on the Democrats’ agenda depends a lot on how the candidates respond to ideas like Warren’s, and what they offer in return. How bold will they be? Will we be talking about a radical new course, or a safer route back to what’s been tried before?

We don’t know yet. But we’re glad some of you have come to Houston to kick-start that conversation.